Google secretive about the company's server technology

Google has until now been very secretive about the company's server technology. But now, Google has for the first time revealed technical details about the servers

which operates the world's largest search engine.


For the first time, American journalists had a look behind the scenes with search giant Google. Normally with Google maps close to the body when

apply the technical details of the server park, which operates the world's largest search engine, but now the company has fully displayed his unusual self-developed

server designs.

It is not surprising that Google chose to develop its own server instead of buying a finished product from IBM, HP or another large

suppliers. Google will not tell you how many servers the company has installed in its data centers around the world, but it is estimated that the figure lies

well over one million.

It is this gigantic server park, which will guarantee that a Google search always produces a results page within a few seconds - no matter where you

are in the world.

Google's proprietary server has a thickness of 3.5-inch (2U server languages), two processors, two hard drives and eight sockets for memory on a motherboard from

Gigabyte. There used both the x86 processors from Intel and AMD.

The biggest surprise in the Google design is that each server has its own 12-volt battery. If the power fails the battery can take over and keep

server running for a while.

According to Google's server designer Peter Poulsen (red), the company has used this concept since 2005 and has now reached the seventh or eighth generation.

Google has thus chosen a different solution than many other companies with large data centers where central UPS devices (uninterruptible power supply) is used

to guard against blackouts. According to Google the solution with the built-in battery cheaper and more energy efficient.

A great UPS has an energy efficiency of 92-95 percent, while the server battery is as high as 99.99 percent. If we are to believe Google. The same

battery concept is also used for its networking equipment.

Peter Poulsen (red) received data from the press conference in Mountain View last week that Google has patented battery technology, but probably is willing to

to license it to third parties.

And energy is in general very important for Google - in a server park of this size can quickly run out of electricity bills.

Google has called PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 1.19 and rates to get it down. A score of 1 means that the entire data center energy

goes to processing, while the 1.5 example. means that half of the energy goes to other functions such as lighting or refrigeration.

There are even developed a special form of power supply for servers, which would be more effective than usual PSU'er - in turn moved a portion of

conversion into the motherboard, which will be a few U.S. dollars more expensive, but it served the home of the server's lifetime.

Another interesting detail from Google is that its data centers consist of standard shipping containers (1AAA) with 1160 servers in each. In 2005 started

Google to build this sort of modular data center and there were problems in the beginning - the first crane was not strong enough to lift the containers - but

Google believes that you have found the right way to keep costs down.

"Ten years ago ... it was clear that the only way to get search to work as a free product, was to run on relatively inexpensive hardware. You

does not run on a mainframe. It does not work economically, "says Google's operational chief Urs Hoezle to CNET.

Google chose early to build up its server infrastructure with cheap mainstream servers and x86 processors, combined with the technological

improvements that the company itself has developed.

And now that green IT and energy efficiency has become the great mantra, Google is ready to share its experiences with the rest of the industry.