

A power plant for the Internet: our newest data center in Alabama - user_235711
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-power-plant-for-internet-our-newest.html

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bluedino
>> Data centers need a lot of infrastructure to run 24/7, and there’s a lot of
potential in redeveloping large industrial sites like former coal power
plants.

I can see rust-belt cities like Detroit being prime for this kind of
development. Real estate would be cheap or nearly free and local governments
would love to get a big name like Google into a tax-free zone.

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walshemj
Trouble is a dc doesn't employ that many people- especially with the way
google have their dc's structured.

I bet you could run a google DC with 3 or 4 technical people per shift plus a
few security guards plus their fury alligators (guards dogs)

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dokument
Google stated that it would bring 75-100 permanent jobs.

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walshemj
Yes I am sure they did to the local politicians ;-)

Unless you collocating a call centre for adwords support I cant see how any DC
would need 100 people full time - anyone got the org chart for a google DC?

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bkeroack
There's just no way you can run a facility of that size with three people,
sorry. In addition to DC techs you need building engineers, HVAC people,
electricians, and probably a lot more that I'm not thinking of.

~~~
walshemj
But post build and commissioning you don't need most of those full time. And
given the way google run the dc the workload is a lot less than say an big IBM
sysplex.

I bet you could run a Google style DC in normal ops with 3 or 4 people per
shift plus security guards.

That's assuming they even bother with a 356/24h shift

You just fly in the specialized teams and new hardware already racked up when
you need to.

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jfim
"We’ve built our own super-efficient servers, invented more efficient ways to
cool our data centers, and even used advanced machine learning to squeeze more
out of every watt of power we consume. Compared to five years ago, we now get
3.5 times the computing power out of the same amount of energy."

I'm probably missing something, but isn't that just brought by the usual
performance improvements between CPU generations?

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duaneb
> I'm probably missing something, but isn't that just brought by the usual
> performance improvements between CPU generations?

Load balancing arbitrary computation is definitely a software problem as well
as hardware. This is basically the halting problem on an industrial scale—you
divvy up work without being able to understand it until it's done. At this
scale, I'm also betting there is nearly infinite room to move computation
around the data center and a lot of room to save money computing the same
number of tasks on fewer cpus.

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wmf
Google just published a great paper on that topic:
[http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/6/4/paper-heracles-
impr...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2015/6/4/paper-heracles-improving-
resource-efficiency-at-scale.html)

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justwannasing
Sitting in St. Louis, I'm about half way between the two, and I can feel the
power, Captain!

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teddyh
“ _A power plant for the Internet_ ”? That’s a bit presumptuous of Google,
assigning themselves the position of powering the Internet. It’s like if China
would call itself “creators of the computers for the Earth”. In both cases,
the viewpoint has technical merit, but it’s a bad sign for the rest of us that
they chose that particular way of putting it.

> _Every time you check your Gmail, search on Google for a nearby restaurant,
> or watch a YouTube video, a server whirs to life in one of our data
> centers._

I see. Hmm, I don’t use Gmail or Google Search, but I _do_ watch things on
YouTube. I take this as a sign that I should stop. No real loss – I have other
things to do with my time.

I suddenly realize what this reminds me of; it’s that quote from _The Matrix_
:

“ _The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room.
You can see it when you look out your window, or when you turn on your
television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when
you pay your taxes._ ”

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robbiep
I guess the logical conclusion of your line of thinking is that you should
stop using the Internet altogether, as there is no telling which sites are
using google analytics or are hosted on the app engine, all of which will do
the same thing

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teddyh
Please don’t be silly. Just because a person tries to cut down on salt doesn’t
mean that the “logical conclusion” is that they should cut out salt
completely, or indeed completely eschew all forms of spices or flavorings.

(Also, I block Google Analytics, and as I understand it, relatively few people
use the Google app engine compared to other hosting solutions.)

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adrianpike
Make sure and stay away from anyone who might be using Google's JS or font
CDN's too.

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bsilvereagle
I didn't realize how prevalent Google's JS and font CDNs were until I ran
uMatrix for a while. It seems between GA, jQuery, and fonts, 80% of web sites
I visit are tied into Google in some fashion.

