Saw a few interesting videos this morning, showing data centres
from Google and from Microsoft:
Google Data
Centre
Microsoft
Data Centre
Some of the interesting differences:
- The Microsoft Data Centre (MDC) has centralised UPS, while the
Google Data Centre (GDC) seems to have a small UPS per server. I
saw a picture of the Google server last week and dismissed it as a
hoax because it looked like the power supply was massive, but if
that is actually a small UPS, makes more sense.
- The cooling in the MDC seems a lot more traditional, while the
GDC utilises some interesting uses for water cooling, especially
around the water cooled towers. Utilising nature would more than
likely reduce energy consumption.
- Probably the most drastic difference is the that GDC uses
containers to host the server infrastructure, while MDC hosts it in
a large room as per traditional data centres. I know Microsoft is
heading in this direction as well, but it would severely reduce
build costs, and apparently is far more efficient.
Will be interesting to see where this heads :) Here is a nice look inside the
HP POD, similar in concept but for mare dense than Google.
