Google Picks Gigabyte for Efficiency/Reliability

[tuannguyen]

Google this week released details of how it builds servers at its major data centers. Not surprisingly, Google focused on efficiency and power, two big criteria for running an always online operation.

Google Picks Gigabyte for Efficiency/Reliability : Read more

 

[Shadow703793]

Good news for Gigabyte. More specs would have helped, esp. regarding the HDD(10k or 15k?,etc) and the motherboard model(s).

 

[Flameout]

i'll be looking for 3 years warranty on parts that i buy for my next compy. i know asus has it, but does gigabyte?

 

[my_name_is_earl]

that's a pretty nice open case. Very useful for switching out component. Need one of those for my computer store as we regularly fixes PCs and the likes. Too busy to do one myself Anyway, I build all my computer using Gigabyte motherboard so I kind of know what this article is about and too agree with Google's decision.

 

[ravenware]

Cool Gigabyte has really stepped up their game as of late.

I have been eyeballing MSI too. They slipped for a while but now seem to be offering good competitive boards with nice layouts.

 

[scimanal]

7.2K RPM drives I have some of those same drives sitting on my desk. SATA Hitachi Deskstars - not SAS (no need since these are commonly used in massive parallel database operations. IE no vmware etc ) The massive storage would be in separate SAN units, much like IBMs storage units.

I am curios about mobo model as well, but I assume it varies, just look at Gigabytes most recent server mobos. They are across the board very efficient. I suspect allot of the efficiency lies in

 

[ilikesoup]

The GA-9IVDP has been rumored since 2006. I found a thread where a guy said he got a system built around a GA-9IVDP as a signing bonus from google.

 

[hellwig]

Shipping containers? Those big solid metal ones? I wonder if google counts the power it takes to circulate air through one of those. They aren't designed to be very open to air flow, not when they travel on an open-deck ship across the ocean.

 

[Guest]

perhaps they forgot to mention that separate batteries often have a lower efficiency than a large one?
The 95% VS 99% efficiency quickly gets lost if you know that if 1 battery has an efficiency of 95%. 16 smaller batteries will have a total efficiency of 90,31% (every doubling of battery adds half of the efficiency to the total sum).
In other words, they'd be better off with a large capacity battery and controllers that will redirect power where needed, as opposed to separate cells for each rackserver.

Either way, google must know something Yahoo or others don't, because their search engines are just amazing!

 

[Milleman]

A battery on each server...? Maybe they are right regarding efficiency. But they only last around 2 years. Then each battery has to be changed. How's that for cost and efficiency?

 

[Milleman]

Are they using Linux?

 

[smokinjoe]

They are using Windows Datacenter edition 2008 64 bit and each container they cough up 2-9 million to Microsoft! What a deal, they could we waiting billions per year if they ran Linux! You know the TCO is less on Windows, right?

 

[Guest]

Wonder why they dont use one large power supply and one large battery backup.

As others have said many small batters is not more efficient. I dont konw where they are getting their 99.9% efficiency numbers, but thats completely bogus. The battery itself is less efficient then that. Unless they are only talking about transmission losses, but i really cant see them losing very much using 20 feet of wire vs 2 feet. One large supply with controllers makes way more sense, especially since you could redirect power to keep specific servers up way longer then you can if each server has it own battery.

As far as one large power supply goes. Same thing. Power supplies have an efficiency curve based on how much you draw out of it. It would be far easier to tune for a high efficiency with one large power supply then many small ones. Im sure you could get the efficiency up in the 95% range.

Its also much easier to cool the entire thing if you can isolate the power supply and backups from the servers. Pulling the power supply out of the 'server room' can reduce the cooling requirements significantly.

I mean they have hundres of thousands of servers, so im sure they know what they are doing. But in this case it looks like they chose the off the self method rather then the best method.