Inside Google's Secretive Data Centers | Hacker News Reader

Inside Google's Secretive Data Centers

mashable.com

82 pointsssclafani24 comments

That is a masterfully done video.

I was surprised they showed the roof of a data center using Google maps so I went to see if I could find one of the more 'current' ones. [1]. This one is pretty easy to spot from the air, and conveniently Google's page has a push pin where the data center should be. But if you go there in maps ...

Not too surprisingly, its been elided from the satellite imagery. Or perhaps more likely the imagery that shows the constructed data center isn't included for that particular geo-coordinate, showing instead the pre-datacenter view :-).

The large building you can see [2] is Homeshield window and door.

Note: If it had not been 'erased' you would easily have picked it out from the cooling towers which are shown at various times in the video and a common thing around data centers.

[1] http://www.google.com/datacenter/thedalles/index.html

[2] http://goo.gl/maps/FsOE (map link)

What benefit does hiding the Google Maps tile have for security?

None.

That was one of the things I found so humorous about Google's data center secrecy. It goes beyond reason. And because they are so extreme as to actually take the time to filter their data centers out of their own satellite imagery, I was curious why the were putting out a video on them.

After watching the video, and realizing it was the visual equivalent of the famous feedback line "No one would be better for this job than Bob!" I literally laughed out loud.

So I don't know if it was in response to Facebook's stuff or not, but its interesting to see that aspect of the company being pressured. (Its not like data centers are sexy or anything outside of the operations world)

Boy, you gotta love this: The text of the article mentions google abandoning Windows OS "Google to abandon Windows." for security reasons, yet in the video, which supposedly is about google's strong security practices, you see a guy using a windows machine. For those curious is at 1:07. :)

Windows is not running on their servers, and the computer shown running windows seems only to be used by the techs who are putting the servers together.

Yes, but the point the parent comment is referring to is that Google (apparently) abandoned Microsoft Windows completely - across the entire company. Even admin staff, accounts staff, the computers used to book free massages etc.

Some how I doubted it (how would they QA test any of their Windows executables such as Chrome or GTalk) but it was what they announced.

Essentially what happened was you had to have a manager approved justification for running a windows machine, whereas previously it was left entirely up to user choice.

Google also has a habit of releasing information to the public as if it's current, whereas it's actually what they were doing a few years previously. I wouldn't be surprised if that video segment was three or four years old.

Did anyone recognise the brand/model of HDD they use? Would be interesting to know what Google chose as I'm sure they spent a lot of time/money researching the best HDD for their needs.

Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population : http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

If Steven Levy's "In the Plex" reflects current reality, Google buys very cheap failure-prone HDDs and builds in a lot of redundancy: "Google's first CIO, Douglas Merrill, once noted that the disk drives Google purchased were 'poorer quality than what you would put into your kid's computer at home.'" [page 183]

I seem to remember a paper discussing failure rates, and that there wasn't a large statistical difference between the 'poorer quality' hard drives and the higher end stuff.

While it's notable Google is sharing this information, I don't see anything that stands out from the norm in datacenter policies and design. The data destruction procedures might be a step beyond most, but this is pretty standard stuff for a professional facility.

A friend pointed out that the volt meter they used had "google" written on it. Do they host third party companies?

Maybe that's about employee theft.

The first datacenter (as far as shown on the video) can be seen on Google Maps here: http://goo.gl/maps/Gzg5

No identification labels though.

I don't see the giant gate that they had in the video though.

Yeah. I guess the video shows a fake place. Which might make sense, considering security issues.

Look just south of that point, to the massive unlabeled building with the large gate and power substation.

Yeah, that looks more like a datacenter: http://goo.gl/maps/bYcG

Dead giveaway: the huge row of generators on the south side of the building. I'm having trouble identifying the other stuff because the photo is so overexposed.

Compare this to Microsoft's huge Chicago datacenter: http://goo.gl/maps/jVHw

DanielRibeiro: Do you happen to live on Minerva st?

Totally OT, but some of your personal information was encoded in the Google Maps url you distributed!

Not really. A friend of mine does, and google map set it up as mine default location. I've changed it now, but it is really good to know Google likes to give on its tiny url my default location.

The sense of invasion of privacy is so overwhelming that I can't describe how happy I am with the url shortner lab feature.

Considering the glare of this datacenter's roof it's as green as you get it.

Pretty interesting, especially the hard drive "destruction" methods.

This video shows only the methods Google has in place to protect the data from physical intrusion which I assume is pretty much done by every other company that hosts huge user data.

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