Google uncloaks once-secret server | Business Tech – CNET News.
I love this machine. It speaks to me on so many different levels. While the server vendors have been building slimmer-but-longer 1U servers, Google has literally broken the mold, and built a server with the entire datacenter in mind, not just the rack. Instead of fighting a fruitless war for density by going longer, Google looked at the problem as a whole and came up with an ingenious solution. I applaud them. I especially applaud them from my position of having to deal with the rest of the industry’s complete backassery in their approach to the same problem, which as I have said publicly many times, has failed.
Note the low-cost components. Note the lack of a case, which only adds weight and complicates cooling. Note the lack of hardware. This server has components held together by Velcro strips. It has a built-in 12V battery backup. It has a very compact motherboard. It’s width means that it can fit 2 side-by-side in a standard 19″ rack, and its height means they can fit, I’m guessing between 28 and 32 of them per standard 42U rack. But given that they can squeeze the rows of racks MUCH closer together than in a same sized facility equipped with 36″-42″ deep cabinets this means the number of servers per facility increases by around one third to half again as dense. In fact, the larger the datacenter, the greater the delta in density scales towards this form-factor. From the one Google datacenter I’ve seen, they are large facilities.
Well done Google. My hat’s off to you.
This is a litte -a lot, really- like the reasons the Russians have put far more rockets into space then we have: You can even…hehehehehe!..Google it!
One of the more important reasons was called the “big dumb booster” theory.
Por exemplo, the Saturn V rocket, magnificent as it was, was *insanely* complex, made exclusively out of unobtainium and illaffordium, and did I mention the COST?
Whereas, the Rooskis used ‘cast iron’ rockets (not literally, but you get the drift) that were cheaper to build, flew nearly as well as ours, and overall, carried more tonnage to space than our delicate, Formula One-like Saturns.
Hats off to Google, indeed! This is how I built my race cars; Function above ALL else, form, if I had time and/or money.
I’m just going to leave my typical comment about how well this can work for Google, but for anyone colocating a machine, what the data centers charge mandates 1U as being the best bang for the buck, despite what logic dictates. 🙂