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View Full Version : Google's servers and challenges they face



---MAD---
30-05-2008, 08:54 PM
I just read this article on pcnews.com, http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9955184-7.html?tag=nefd.top, it's quite insaine....

Google have over 10,000 servers but look at this:

In each cluster's first year, it's typical that 1,000 individual machine failures will occur; thousands of hard drive failures will occur; one power distribution unit will fail, bringing down 500 to 1,000 machines for about 6 hours; 20 racks will fail, each time causing 40 to 80 machines to vanish from the network; 5 racks will "go wonky," with half their network packets missing in action; and the cluster will have to be rewired once, affecting 5 percent of the machines at any given moment over a 2-day span, Dean said. And there's about a 50 percent chance that the cluster will overheat, taking down most of the servers in less than 5 minutes and taking 1 to 2 days to recover.

That's crazy how things like this, in a modern day still happen to a large scale.

Heres an image:
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/bto/20080529/Google_data_center_c2000_Jeff_Dean_400x318.jpg

Notice the fan to cool the servers, haha?

Pretty interesting stuff although the article's far too long and just bores me :P.

xxMATTGxx
30-05-2008, 08:58 PM
If they are Google Servers, I would of thought they have better cooling systems such as Air Condition or something?

HotelUser
30-05-2008, 09:03 PM
One of the Google founders is obsessed with optimizing for speed and performance. Technical failures are unpreventable...though that's what technicians are for. Having said that, I have never experienced downtime on google servers. Google uptime statistics:
http://uptime.pingdom.com/site/month_summary/site_name/www.google.com
http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=192

---MAD---
30-05-2008, 09:37 PM
Obviously you wouldn't notice the down time due to the thousands of servers there to support each other ;).

N!ck
30-05-2008, 10:02 PM
Well they have hundreds of thousandes of servers across the world so who's bothered if a few of them are down for a couple of minutes per month. It's not like Google's slow lol.

Nereo
30-05-2008, 10:04 PM
I have more servers than google...........:eusa_danc

Wait whats a server again? :P

Blob
30-05-2008, 10:05 PM
I have more servers than google...........:eusa_danc

Wait whats a server again? :P

That just wasn't funny.

Anyways, thats alot! My dad would be like omg compared to the servers he has at his work..

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