Google has given a rare glimpse inside the vast data centres around the globe that power its services.
They reveal an intricate maze of computers that process Internet search requests, show
YouTube video clips and distribute email for millions of people.
With hundreds of thousands of servers, colourful cables and even
bicycles so engineers can get around quickly, they range from a
converted paper mill in Finland to custom made server farms in Iowa.
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The online gallery reveal the interior of eight of Google's secretive server farms around the globe, from Finland to Iowa
WHERE ARE THE SERVERS?
Google's major data centers are located in:
- Berkeley County, S.C.
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Douglas County, Ga.
- Mayes County, Okla.
- Lenoir,
N.C.
- The Dalles, Ore.
- Hamina, Finland
- St. Ghislain, Belgium.
New data centers are currently being built in Quilicura, Chile; Hong Kong,
Singapore and Taiwan.
'Very
few people have stepped inside Google’s data centers, and for good
reason: our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and
we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close
guard,' the firm said.
'While
we’ve shared many of our designs and best practices, and we’ve been
publishing our efficiency data since 2008, only a small set of employees
have access to the server floor itself.
'Today, for the first time, you can see inside our data centers and pay them a virtual visit.
'On
Where the Internet lives, our new site featuring beautiful photographs
by Connie Zhou, you’ll get a never-before-seen look at the technology,
the people and the places that keep Google running.'
The site features photos from inside
some of the eight data centers that Google Inc. already has running in
the U.S., Finland and Belgium.
Google is also building data centers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Chile.
Virtual
tours of a North Carolina data center also will be available through
Google's 'Street View' service, which is usually used to view photos of
neighborhoods around the world.
The
photographic access to Google's data centers coincides with the
publication of a Wired magazine article about how the company builds and
operates them.
The
article is written by Steven Levy, a journalist who won Google's trust
while writing 'In The Plex,' a book published last year about the
company's philosophy and evolution.
One of Google's server farms in Council Bluffs,
Iowa, which provides over 115,000 square feet of space for servers
running services like Search and YouTube
Google colour codes its servers depending on
their location, while piping in the buildings is coded depending on what
it carries - with cool water in blue tubes and warm in red
Google's Douglas County data centre in Georgia is so large the firm provides Google branded bicycles for staff to get around on
A street view tour published by Google also
reveals a hidden surprise - A Stormtrooper standing guard over a server
in Google's North Carolina server farm
The data centers represent Google's
nerve center, although none are located near the company's headquarters
in Mountain View, Calif.
As Google blossomed from its roots in a
Silicon Valley garage, company co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin
worked with other engineers to develop a system to connect low-cost
computer servers in a way that would help them realize their ambition to
provide a digital roadmap to all of the world's information.
Initially, Google just wanted enough
computing power to index all the websites on the Internet and deliver
quick responses to search requests. As Google's tentacles extended into
other markets, the company had to keep adding more computers to store
videos, photos, email and information about their users' preferences.
The insights that Google gathers
about the more than 1 billion people that use its services has made the
company a frequent target of privacy complaints around the world.
The latest missive came Tuesday in
Europe, where regulators told Google to revise a 7-month-old change to
its privacy policy that enables the company to combine user data
collected from its different services.
Google studies Internet search
requests and Web surfing habits in an effort to gain a better
understanding of what people like. The company does this in an effort to
show ads of products and services to the people most likely to be
interested in buying them. Advertising accounts for virtually all of
Google's revenue, which totaled nearly $23 billion through the first
half of this year.
Even as it allows anyone with a Web
browser to peer into its data centers, Google intends to closely guard
physical access to its buildings. The company also remains cagey about
how many computers are in its data centers, saying only that they house
hundreds of thousands of machines to run Google's services.
Google's need for so many computers
has turned the company a major electricity user, although management
says it's constantly looking for ways to reduce power consumption to
protect the environment and lower its expenses.
Here hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the
server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated in Oklahoma. The
green lights are the server status LEDs reflecting from the front of the
servers
The Iowa campus network room, where routers and
switches allow data centers to talk to each other. The fiber cables run
along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling.
Even the water pipes reflect Google's brand:
These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of an
Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes
return the warm water back to be cooled.
In Hamina, Finland, Google chose to renovate an
old paper mill to take advantage of the building's infrastructure as
well as its proximity to the Gulf of Finland's cooling waters.
Google's server farm in Douglas County, Iowa
The exterior of a Dulles, Oregon server farm
Denise Harwood, a Google Engineer, diagnoses an
overheated CPU. For more than a decade, Google has built some of the
world's most efficient servers.
A Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Each server rack has four switches, connected by
a different coloured cable. Colours are kept the same throughout data
centres so staff know which one to replace in case of failure.
