Photo of the racks in the original Google datacenter | Hacker News Reader

Photo of the racks in the original Google datacenter

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68 pointspaul19 comments

For your amusement :)

Got anymore? I'd love to see what kind of network gear was in there at the time, etc. Very cool. Thanks.

Unfortunately I didn't get a digital camera until 2002, so I don't have many pictures from early Google.

Here's a closeup of a nic on one of the machines: http://friendfeed.com/e/e7bc8124-ee7f-4949-91d2-773e410613d3... I took this picture two months ago at the Computer History Museum, where the jj rack is on display.

The Computer History Museum is really cool! I highly recommend geeks check it out if you are in the area .. especially if you can catch some of the demonstrations/tours.

just curious, did 'j' in 'jj' stand four "journaller" in a naming scheme, or something else entirely?

Here's an upclose one on the first gen rack: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Google’s_...

My understanding is that they found the HP ProCurve switches were a better deal to buy two chassis and stuff all the blades into one box rather than buy the blades and add them to one. It was cheaper that way.

What were those switches for? (not the network switches, the physical on/off switches with the green and white wires)

Fans?

They are the power LEDs/switches for each of the four motherboards on each piece of cork board. Yes, cork board. It's non-conductive.

Power switches. There were 4 machines per layer, 80 per rack.

BTW, here's a video (taken by someone else): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z19-6tvGSq4

thats almost amazing

Wait, are there wood shelves in there!?

Here's what their datacenters look like a couple years ago (with Chris DiBona): http://flickr.com/photos/ttrueman/296867981/sizes/l/

Dude, that's at the UW.

I'm not sure what UW you're referring to, but I took that at an ACM conference at UIUC: http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2006/

Are these conferences still happening? I can't seem to reach any more recent than 2006.

Yes, they are:

http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2007/speakers http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/conference/2008/

I remember seeing videos of Yegge's and Munroe's talks. Yegge's is worth watching.

Looks like most of the midsized companies "data centers" I've been in recently. At least the cables aren't all over the floor for you to trip on as well.

And at least it's not this: http://www.sysadminday.com/horrors.html

heh, slot 1/a cpu connectors. ah, the 90s.

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