A Peek Behind the Curtain

By Brad

Google’s massive server farms have, until now, been mostly kept in a shroud of secrecy. But Ars Technica was recently given unprecedented access:

Each Google server is hooked to an independent 12V battery to keep the units running in the event of a power outage. Data centers themselves are built and housed in shipping containers (we’ve seen Sun pushing this trend as well), a practice that went into effect after the brownouts of 2005. Each container holds a total of 1,160 servers and can theoretically draw up to 250kW. Those numbers might seem a bit high for a data center optimized for energy efficiency—it breaks down to around 216W per system—but there are added cooling costs to be considered in any type of server deployment.

The full report, though filled with techbabble, is worth checking out.