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The re-branded Dell servers Google sent out as search indexers (I believe) were pretty common 10-15 years ago. I remember seeing two of them here in Sweden alon
by INTPenis 4y ago
The re-branded Dell servers Google sent out as search indexers (I believe) were pretty common 10-15 years ago. I remember seeing two of them here in Sweden alone, during my career.
But that is not the caseless DIY shelf-servers they've displayed in various PR videos.
- runlevel1 4y agoIn fact, there are a dozen on eBay right now: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=google+search+appliance https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=google+search+appliance According to Wikipedia, the 2U models were indeed based on Dell PowerEdge servers, and the 1U models were apparently based on Super Micro servers.[^1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Search_Appliance
- snowwrestler 4y agoFor those custom servers, I remember reading that Google did not bother unracking and disposing of them, but let the dead ones sit in the rack indefinitely. They figured out that it was more efficient to have hardware techs spend 100% of their time provisioning new hardware, and just let their software detect the broken servers, power them down, and route the tasks to working servers.
- monocasa 4y agoAt some point the hyperscalers end up decommissioning their servers because of perf/watt concerns. I don't think they bother with single failures for the reasons you've stated, but they do decommission full sections of DCs once the wattage calculus no longer makes sense.