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How Many Google Machines, Really?

Posted by timothy on from the measured-by-weight-not-by-volume dept.

BoneThugND writes "I found this article on TNL.NET. It takes information from the S-1 Filing to reverse engineer how many machines Google has (hint: a lot more than 10,000). 'According to calculations by the IEE, in a paper about the Google cluster, a rack with 88 dual-CPU machines used to cost about $278,000. If you divide the $250 million figure from the S-1 filing by $278,000, you end up with a bit over 899 racks. Assuming that each rack holds 88 machines, you end up with 79,000 machines.'" An anonymous source claims over 100,000.

15 of 476 comments (clear)

  1. $278k ?? by r_cerq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's $3159 per machine, and those are today's prices... They weren't so low a couple of years ago...

    1. Re:$278k ?? by sql*kitten · · Score: 5, Insightful

      so it means if you are smart enough, you don't need to have a $1,500,000 Sun server or that kind of shit. leave that for big corporations with lame-ass programmers. imagine what google could do with that kind of shit

      The difference is that if Google loses track of a few pages due to node failure it's no big deal because a) they don't guarantee to index every page on the web anyway and b) the chances are that page will be spidered again in the near future - and it may not even still exist anyway.

      Your bank, on the other hand, can't just "lose" a few transactions here and there. FedEx can't just lose a few packages there and there. Sure they occasionally physically lose one, but they never lose the information that at one point, they did have it. Your phone company can't just lose a few calls you made and not bill you for them. Your hospital can't just lose a few CAT scans and think oh well, he'll be in for another scan eventually.

      Now, I'm not saying that Google's technique isn't clever - I'm saying that it can't really be generalized to other applications. And that's why very smart people - and big corporations can afford to hire very smart people - keep on buying Sun and IBM kit by the boatload.

    2. Re:$278k ?? by geniusj · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I can confirm this as well.. I have seen their racks in Equinix in Ashburn, VA. I pass by their cages every time I go to my cage there. I believe I also saw them in Exodus in Santa Clara a couple of years ago. They are 1U half depth and do indeed lack a case. There are definitely thousands of their servers in Ashburn, VA, and they are very space efficient (as they would need to be).

  2. Not unexpected... by avalys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think this is that strange: after all, that 10,000 machines figure is several years old. It's only logical that Google has expanded their facilities since then.

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  3. Maybe just me... by hot_Karls_bad_cavern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Might just be me, but damn, don't you think this has raised the interested of our three letter entities? i mean, damn that is just some serious computing and indexing power on cheap, "disposable" hardware...with a filesystem that can keep track of that many machines? If i headed one of such entities, i'd sure want to know more about it!

  4. Re:Pretty Broad by avalys · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, but aside from dealing with hardware failures and other physical / logistical problems, there really isn't much of a difference between managing 45,000 computers and managing 80,000. They're both Really Big Numbers, and I'm sure whatever software they're using is scaleable enough to smoothly handle many more machines than that.

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  5. wait by Docrates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember there's a little thing called "volume discount"...

    It's gotta be more than that.

    --

    There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
  6. Re:Assumptions? by 2MuchC0ffeeMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    i thought of this too, but then i thought that they probably bought them 5/10/20 at a time as they grew.

    --
    Runnin' On Empty .... I'm Still Alive
  7. Absolutely Beautiful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All those machine, all that complexity and activity, all boiled down to one little box under a Google logo. The most useful input box on the internet.

    Thanks Google!

  8. Acquisition by MrChuck · · Score: 4, Insightful
    recall that important mantra:
    The cost of acquiring the machine is a fraction of the cost of owning it.

    And lets not forget the overhead of 2 networks per machine and all the patch panels, wiring, switches. Toss in console management (which may not be on all machines at all time), monitoring and management of said machines. Oh, and one really tired guy running around.

    Disks are going to fail at a rate of several hundred or thousand PER DAY, just statistically. (along with power supplies etc)

    Toss in that in three years, ALL of those machines are obsolete.
    That's huge.

    I've got ~300 racks in a half full data center upstairs from me. All network cables run to a room below it to patch panels. Around 50% the size of the DC is cable management. Next to that is a room FILLED with chest high batteries - these are used during outages until the generators need to be kicked on. And a NOC takes up about 1/5th the space of the DC (monitoring systems worldwide, but it's got seating for maybe 40 people - tight and usually filled with 10 folks, but in a crunch we live up there).

    So that $3159 is only a bit of it. And in 3 years, all those machines will likely be replaced for whatever $3k buys then. That's about to be a 2 CPU Athlon64 box. If Sun can pull a rabbit out of its ass, we'll have 8 and 16CPU Athlon64 boxes. At least with that, some of the CPUs can talk to each other really really really fast.

  9. Re:Google hosting by cyberformer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they did, there's a real chance that there could be no more Internet for a lot of applications: people would just upload their Web pages to Google, users would log on to Google to search, and most email will go through Gmail.

    This is a good thing for Google, but not for the world as a whole.

  10. Re:Environmental impact: power to 68,000 homes by lawpoop · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, it is true. We can't exist without polluting. However, I'm willing to bet, without doing the calaulations, that the pollution you personally generate by querying google is much less than what you generate browsing slashdot on your home computer.

    --
    Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
    -- Pablo Picasso
  11. Re:This is actually useful by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    where do you go to buy 80,000 hard drives?

    You don't; their Sales Director comes to you...

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    If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
  12. Re:Server pricing by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "hard drives ... they'd require at most 3Gb (OS) + 4Gb (ramdrive backup)"

    Which is why they have no problems finding space for GMail - you can't buy full size drives as small as 7Gb anymore, so they already have countless Tbs of unused drive space in their racks.

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    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
  13. Re:No by rayvd · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The best way for Google to accomplish a DDOS if they _really_ wanted to would be to make every search result point to the target website. :)

    Now that would be impressive...