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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.

4 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. 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!