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They aren't playing the same game. Facebook designed its own servers, they were chassis-less, didn't have a mains power input so no switch-mode power supplies,

They aren't playing the same game. Facebook designed its own servers, they were chassis-less, didn't have a mains power input so no switch-mode power supplies, instead they had a 12V DC feed, they had no rack-wide large UPS instead each server had a small battery in it, they were not built for massive redundancy like a Dell server with dual PSUs and redunant networking, because they were disposable nodes in a larger software cluster, e.g. [1] [2] Things that aren't Fedex's core competency. Or, Microsoft's roofless datacenters[3], or locating datacenters in remote and colder climates, things the big players can do with economies of scale beyond buying things cheaply, they can customise the entire datacenter. Microsoft has experimented with underwater datacenters[4] and modular containerised datacenter extensions[5] which could be datacenters no human needs to be near to work on, or which could be dropped off somewhere with cheap land and power and internet, and picked up three years later and retired from use, or etc. Ideas which are not FedEx's core competency and need large scale and software clustering on top. While FedEx would be hiring ordinary IT employees to work in a standard datacenter in cheap business park - not very enticing - Amazon could be hiring datacenter workers to work with Amazon's undersea cabling connecting their worldwide datacenters; more enticing work for skilled employees. Google has been known/rumoured to migrate heavy batch processing workloads around the planet, following the day/night cycles to take advantage of regional cheaper night-rate electricity all the time. Something which reduces their energy costs but which FedEx may not be big enough to do. [1] https://engineering.fb.com/2016/03/09/data-center-engineering/facebook-s-new-front-end-server-design-delivers-on-performance-without-sucking-up-power/f https://engineering.fb.com/2016/03/09/data-center-engineerin... [2] https://engineering.fb.com/2019/03/14/data-center-engineering/f16-minipack/ https://engineering.fb.com/2019/03/14/data-center-engineerin... [3] http://www.500eco.com/exhibits/microsoft-roofless-datacenter-natural-air-cooling http://www.500eco.com/exhibits/microsoft-roofless-datacenter... [4] https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/ https://news.microsoft.com/innovation-stories/project-natick... [5] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-develops-modular-azure-data-center-optional-satellite-connectivity/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/microsoft-develop...

kragen 4y ago
When The Facebook started designing their own servers (which, by the way, have lots of switch-mode power supplies in them, and always have) the game they were playing was "be a better MySpace". They were running a bunch of PHP pages. At the time you could have made the same argument about The Facebook vs. Rackspace: "While Facebook would be hiring ordinary IT employees to work in a standard datacenter in a cheap business park, Rackspace could be hiring datacenter workers to work with Rackspace's BGP peering connecting their worldwide datacenters." But The Facebook decided to make informatics their core competency, to the point of building their own servers with 12 volts running to the rack, same as Google before them. There were surely industrial companies in 01922 who decided that management wasn't their core competency (though they used different words), and if they needed help with management they'd contract out to management specialists like Taylor or Gilbreth. They met the same fate that will meet companies today that decide that informatics isn't their core competency.

kragen 4y ago

When The Facebook started designing their own servers (which, by the way, have lots of switch-mode power supplies in them, and always have) the game they were playing was "be a better MySpace". They were running a bunch of PHP pages. At the time you could have made the same argument about The Facebook vs. Rackspace: "While Facebook would be hiring ordinary IT employees to work in a standard datacenter in a cheap business park, Rackspace could be hiring datacenter workers to work with Rackspace's BGP peering connecting their worldwide datacenters." But The Facebook decided to make informatics their core competency, to the point of building their own servers with 12 volts running to the rack, same as Google before them. There were surely industrial companies in 01922 who decided that management wasn't their core competency (though they used different words), and if they needed help with management they'd contract out to management specialists like Taylor or Gilbreth. They met the same fate that will meet companies today that decide that informatics isn't their core competency.