15 ms·

Google Data centers

119 points by blearyeyed 13y ago

miu9089 13y ago
Hmm... no mention here of how NSA are granted direct access to Google data. The website must need updating. A shiny website can't gloss over Google's close collusion with the NSA as revealed by The Guardian. Their desperate PR attempts will backfire until they make public and clear statements to improve their transparency.
- SmileyKeith 13y ago
  What is this odd form of spam?
  - miu9089 13y ago
    Mentioning the duplicitous activity of Google in a story about their data centers is very much on-topic. I heavily suspect you work for Google.
    - jrockway 13y ago
      -11 karma points in only 43 minutes of existence. Good work.
      - jb007 13y ago
        I don't think this individual cares about points.
    - minwcnt5 13y ago
      And I heavily suspect you work for Microsoft.
- gbin 13y ago
  hey FUD guy: we had a ton of revelations by Snowden but this is not one of them. I would not stay at Google if I had any evidence the security team had intentionally compromised the security of our users period. And I heard the same thing from a lot of different Googlers. Accusing random people of random actions is very easy but the burden of proof is on your side then. I could say mimicking your reasoning: "Prove me you are not a perfect human imitation impersonated by an alien, prove it ! You see you are an alien in disguise!"
- 10098 13y ago
  Scroogled!
danielcorreia 13y ago
Some cool wallpapers :)
bsirkia 13y ago
Very cool. I think it would have been better to have the name of the tech//person/place on the thumbnail on hover, I would like just be able to hover across all the thumbnails and see some info about each one.
yogo 13y ago
The area where meth is cooked looks nice http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_2000/DLS_013.jpg http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_2000... :)
- miu9089 13y ago
  How endearing. Are you aware of recent reports in the news? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-... Please think twice before using a Google service.
  - melling 13y ago
    It looks like he has been on HN for 2 years so I would conclude that he has heard the news, and quit wasting people's time.
    - ChrisArchitect 13y ago
      true. yet we have this link of datacenter photos that has been around for like a year. so old man.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    I'm reasonably certain everyone on HN is aware of these particular "recent reports in the news".
    - miu9089 13y ago
      You'd be surprised. Recently posters on HN have commented that Google weren't involved with the NSA (using denial quotes from Google staff, as though they carry any weight), and that the NSA only had access via the fiber itself. Some here seem unaware of the direct access Google provided to their systems.
      - ceejayoz 13y ago
alphakappa 13y ago
These are beautiful pictures, but it was hard to navigate. 'Go Inside' for example, would dump in the middle of a gallery of images, making me think that I had missed the thumbnails at the beginning. Having a button in the middle of these images was also weird (as is having to click something just to see what the images are about. There's plenty of screen real-estate to show the image caption). Also strange is that the captions were cut off in the middle of some not-so-long sentences. Another click to show the remainder of a sentence. I'm sure this looked very pretty as a design, but the usability is poor.
- seagrass 13y ago
  'Go Inside' for example, would dump in the middle of a gallery of images, making me think that I had missed the thumbnails at the beginning. Complaining for the sake of complaining? When you hover over "Go Inside" it says "View all photos," so isn't that its exact intention? Plus what are you talking about "missed the thumbnails"?
  - alphakappa 13y ago
    >> Complaining for the sake of complaining? No. >> When you hover over "Go Inside" it says "View all photos," so isn't that its exact intention? I'm not sure I even realized what happens when you hover over it. I clicked it and it scrolled past a bunch of thumbnails, showed me a spinner for a while, and then showed me an image. It didn't give me the feeling that I was seeing the first image in the thumbnail list (Maybe it was, but giving proper context is important). To provide context, expand the image in place, or show a lightbox, or show the large image with some thumbnails so I still know that I'm looking at the first image.
- cahitonur 13y ago
  Nice to see that I'm not the only one having problems with this page. First I thought I have JavaScript disabled but it was not. I just gave up after a couple minutes struggling and refresh. I had a very similar feeling when I login to g+. It's loading and loading and loading but I don't get anything in the end. I started to think twice before I click a google link.
nemesisj 13y ago
Heh - one of those data centers (Lenoir) was the focus of quite a bit of optimism in the Piedmont area of North Carolina a few years ago. I can't find the news articles, but essentially, massive tax benefits were provided to Google and they built their data center and proceeded to hire like 4 people, b/c, you know, it's not a factory. This was apparently a surprise to everyone who thought a new googleplex was somehow in the works (or maybe this was just wishful thinking). I'm not really sure what the moral of the story is because there are probably hundreds of similar backwater towns in the USA that would line up to offer the same benefits.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  $212 million in incentives for a three-hundred-billion dollar company, ugh. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/the-high-cost-of-wooing-google http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/the-high-cost...
  - aray 13y ago
    (NCer here) The big thing in a lot of rural North Carolina is that there was a huge textile processing and paper processing industry that's slowly been losing ground to overseas manufacturing. The end result is that many of these counties have extremely large power and water production capabilities built up and no one to sell to. The datacenters are attractive because they will actually buy these utilities at much higher capacities than the community would otherwise. This is worth much more than any small number of jobs created.
    - dclusin 13y ago
      This actually makes a lot of sense to me (someone from an urban area). I never understood why all these towns in the middle of nowhere USA would offer such generous subsidies but this line of reasoning perfectly justifies it. I suspect the cost to decommission or "right-size" these sorts of facilities would probably cost... on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.
    - Arelius 13y ago
codfrantic 13y ago
Most of these pictures have been online for a while, I specifically remember that this[⊗] one was photoshopped because the machines in the racks left and right are mirror images of one another... [⊗]https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/23 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/23
- rbnio 13y ago
  The family of deer that "moved in" next to the Iowa data center [1] also looks quite photoshopped... [1] https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/2 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/2
  - subigo 13y ago
    Definitely not photoshopped. I see these deer everyday. In fact, there are quite a few more now.
- 47 13y ago
  We do a lot of photo shoots for our furniture products. The Photoshop team usually will mirror one side of the sofa with other to make the pictures look symmetrical and nicer. I won't be surprised if the pictures are photoshopped to make them symmetrical to give them a less messy look.
  - alexkus 13y ago
    If you look at the photo it's just three sets of racks that have been mirrored to the other side; the ones with the orange lights and red cables. None of the other racks looked mirrored.
    - codfrantic 13y ago
      Now that you mention it I remember that the mirroring was done to hide a gap in the racks on the right!
- coryking 13y ago
equalarrow 13y ago
Ah, so that's where the Internet lives..
msoad 13y ago
This guy totally wins the monitor setup! I thought I have too many monitors with 5 monitors on my desk http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/people/13 http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/people/13
ChuckMcM 13y ago
These pictures don't do the diversity of the infrastructure justice. (perhaps that is intentional) When I was at Google they had just finished deciding that 'containerized' data centers were not a benefit and had just opened up the buildings in The Dalles, when I left they had brought up the Netherlands and their midwest data centers. Besides the different environments (can you use external air for cooling or not, etc) there have been investigations into power distribution, heating / cooling schemes, and packaging. I don't think any two data centers I walked into looked exactly the same inside. I found that kind of neat.
- hindsightbias 13y ago
  > diversity Still looks like a sausage fest.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - sargun 13y ago
    Women don't tend to apply to datacenter management jobs much. On top of that, there hasn't been much outreach to women in this career field. Since the datacenter management field is a race to the bottom in terms of overheads, I doubt we'll see much either.
oshineye 13y ago
Too bad they never show the interesting stuff. Modern clusters use a new fabric type called Jupiter, built with the Trident+ chips made by Broadcom, that can grow up to ten times bigger then the old Watchtower clusters (up to 150k servers per fabric) Old racks have been replaced by the Ikea enclosures that provide DC at the rack level. The new machines are also really powerful in terms of cpu power and I/O (flash storage, 20Gbit network) and are significantly faster then the previous generation. The public pictures presented in the past are of really old designs that are not longer in service.

119 points by blearyeyed 13y ago

Hmm... no mention here of how NSA are granted direct access to Google data. The website must need updating. A shiny website can't gloss over Google's close collusion with the NSA as revealed by The Guardian. Their desperate PR attempts will backfire until they make public and clear statements to improve their transparency.

SmileyKeith 13y ago
What is this odd form of spam?
- miu9089 13y ago
  Mentioning the duplicitous activity of Google in a story about their data centers is very much on-topic. I heavily suspect you work for Google.
  - jrockway 13y ago
    -11 karma points in only 43 minutes of existence. Good work.
    - jb007 13y ago
      I don't think this individual cares about points.
  - minwcnt5 13y ago
    And I heavily suspect you work for Microsoft.
gbin 13y ago
hey FUD guy: we had a ton of revelations by Snowden but this is not one of them. I would not stay at Google if I had any evidence the security team had intentionally compromised the security of our users period. And I heard the same thing from a lot of different Googlers. Accusing random people of random actions is very easy but the burden of proof is on your side then. I could say mimicking your reasoning: "Prove me you are not a perfect human imitation impersonated by an alien, prove it ! You see you are an alien in disguise!"
10098 13y ago
Scroogled!

danielcorreia 13y ago

Some cool wallpapers :)

bsirkia 13y ago

Very cool. I think it would have been better to have the name of the tech//person/place on the thumbnail on hover, I would like just be able to hover across all the thumbnails and see some info about each one.

yogo 13y ago

The area where meth is cooked looks nice http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_2000/DLS_013.jpg http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/images/_2000... :)

miu9089 13y ago
How endearing. Are you aware of recent reports in the news? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-... Please think twice before using a Google service.
- melling 13y ago
  It looks like he has been on HN for 2 years so I would conclude that he has heard the news, and quit wasting people's time.
  - ChrisArchitect 13y ago
    true. yet we have this link of datacenter photos that has been around for like a year. so old man.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  I'm reasonably certain everyone on HN is aware of these particular "recent reports in the news".
  - miu9089 13y ago
    You'd be surprised. Recently posters on HN have commented that Google weren't involved with the NSA (using denial quotes from Google staff, as though they carry any weight), and that the NSA only had access via the fiber itself. Some here seem unaware of the direct access Google provided to their systems.
    - ceejayoz 13y ago

alphakappa 13y ago

These are beautiful pictures, but it was hard to navigate. 'Go Inside' for example, would dump in the middle of a gallery of images, making me think that I had missed the thumbnails at the beginning. Having a button in the middle of these images was also weird (as is having to click something just to see what the images are about. There's plenty of screen real-estate to show the image caption). Also strange is that the captions were cut off in the middle of some not-so-long sentences. Another click to show the remainder of a sentence. I'm sure this looked very pretty as a design, but the usability is poor.

seagrass 13y ago
'Go Inside' for example, would dump in the middle of a gallery of images, making me think that I had missed the thumbnails at the beginning. Complaining for the sake of complaining? When you hover over "Go Inside" it says "View all photos," so isn't that its exact intention? Plus what are you talking about "missed the thumbnails"?
- alphakappa 13y ago
  >> Complaining for the sake of complaining? No. >> When you hover over "Go Inside" it says "View all photos," so isn't that its exact intention? I'm not sure I even realized what happens when you hover over it. I clicked it and it scrolled past a bunch of thumbnails, showed me a spinner for a while, and then showed me an image. It didn't give me the feeling that I was seeing the first image in the thumbnail list (Maybe it was, but giving proper context is important). To provide context, expand the image in place, or show a lightbox, or show the large image with some thumbnails so I still know that I'm looking at the first image.
cahitonur 13y ago
Nice to see that I'm not the only one having problems with this page. First I thought I have JavaScript disabled but it was not. I just gave up after a couple minutes struggling and refresh. I had a very similar feeling when I login to g+. It's loading and loading and loading but I don't get anything in the end. I started to think twice before I click a google link.

nemesisj 13y ago

Heh - one of those data centers (Lenoir) was the focus of quite a bit of optimism in the Piedmont area of North Carolina a few years ago. I can't find the news articles, but essentially, massive tax benefits were provided to Google and they built their data center and proceeded to hire like 4 people, b/c, you know, it's not a factory. This was apparently a surprise to everyone who thought a new googleplex was somehow in the works (or maybe this was just wishful thinking). I'm not really sure what the moral of the story is because there are probably hundreds of similar backwater towns in the USA that would line up to offer the same benefits.

mikeyouse 13y ago
$212 million in incentives for a three-hundred-billion dollar company, ugh. http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/the-high-cost-of-wooing-google http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-07-22/the-high-cost...
- aray 13y ago
  (NCer here) The big thing in a lot of rural North Carolina is that there was a huge textile processing and paper processing industry that's slowly been losing ground to overseas manufacturing. The end result is that many of these counties have extremely large power and water production capabilities built up and no one to sell to. The datacenters are attractive because they will actually buy these utilities at much higher capacities than the community would otherwise. This is worth much more than any small number of jobs created.
  - dclusin 13y ago
    This actually makes a lot of sense to me (someone from an urban area). I never understood why all these towns in the middle of nowhere USA would offer such generous subsidies but this line of reasoning perfectly justifies it. I suspect the cost to decommission or "right-size" these sorts of facilities would probably cost... on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.
  - Arelius 13y ago

codfrantic 13y ago

Most of these pictures have been online for a while, I specifically remember that this[⊗] one was photoshopped because the machines in the racks left and right are mirror images of one another... [⊗]https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/23 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/all/23

rbnio 13y ago
The family of deer that "moved in" next to the Iowa data center [1] also looks quite photoshopped... [1] https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/2 https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/places/2
- subigo 13y ago
  Definitely not photoshopped. I see these deer everyday. In fact, there are quite a few more now.
47 13y ago
We do a lot of photo shoots for our furniture products. The Photoshop team usually will mirror one side of the sofa with other to make the pictures look symmetrical and nicer. I won't be surprised if the pictures are photoshopped to make them symmetrical to give them a less messy look.
- alexkus 13y ago
  If you look at the photo it's just three sets of racks that have been mirrored to the other side; the ones with the orange lights and red cables. None of the other racks looked mirrored.
  - codfrantic 13y ago
    Now that you mention it I remember that the mirroring was done to hide a gap in the racks on the right!
coryking 13y ago

equalarrow 13y ago

Ah, so that's where the Internet lives..

msoad 13y ago

This guy totally wins the monitor setup! I thought I have too many monitors with 5 monitors on my desk http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/people/13 http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/#/people/13

ChuckMcM 13y ago

These pictures don't do the diversity of the infrastructure justice. (perhaps that is intentional) When I was at Google they had just finished deciding that 'containerized' data centers were not a benefit and had just opened up the buildings in The Dalles, when I left they had brought up the Netherlands and their midwest data centers. Besides the different environments (can you use external air for cooling or not, etc) there have been investigations into power distribution, heating / cooling schemes, and packaging. I don't think any two data centers I walked into looked exactly the same inside. I found that kind of neat.

hindsightbias 13y ago
> diversity Still looks like a sausage fest.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- sargun 13y ago
  Women don't tend to apply to datacenter management jobs much. On top of that, there hasn't been much outreach to women in this career field. Since the datacenter management field is a race to the bottom in terms of overheads, I doubt we'll see much either.

oshineye 13y ago

Too bad they never show the interesting stuff. Modern clusters use a new fabric type called Jupiter, built with the Trident+ chips made by Broadcom, that can grow up to ten times bigger then the old Watchtower clusters (up to 150k servers per fabric) Old racks have been replaced by the Ikea enclosures that provide DC at the rack level. The new machines are also really powerful in terms of cpu power and I/O (flash storage, 20Gbit network) and are significantly faster then the previous generation. The public pictures presented in the past are of really old designs that are not longer in service.