[inforoots] Network infrastructure [1 of 2]

[John C Green Jr]

1 of 2 is Google.  2 of 2 is telephones.

Factoids that might be mentioned at the first generation Google
rack.

Google has over 500K servers in its search / webserver farms.
They dissipate over 100 MwH (100K KwH) of power per year at
a cost of over $10M.  It's enough power for 400K average
American homes, a city of over 1 million.

Their current search / webserver farm looks much like the
first generation rack.  They don't want to pay Dell, HP, Sun,
IBM, or anyone else a fortune for sheet metal.

They have over 6250 racks with 80 servers each.  They spend over
$100M buying expansion and replacement servers per year.  How
often they replace servers is proprietary.  However a guess might
be once a year.  Given 6250 racks, 250 work days per year, and
8 hour work day that's 25 per day or just over 3 per hour.

So like painting the golden gate bridge where they have one team
scraping off the old paint followed by another team applying new
paint all the time, when they get to the end they go back and
start again ... Google has a team dismantling an 80 server rack
every 20 minutes while another team wires and installs the
replacement rack every 20 minutes.  Needless to say to maintain
that pace they have many such teams working in many server rooms.

Regards,
John Green