Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die?

An anonymous reader asks: "I was talking with a co-worker today about how Google is so big, and how they make such great use of commodity hardware to do their business, and one of the topics that came up is what Google does with its old hardware. Google has been around for many years now, they have more machines than any sane person would own, and they are continually expanding. At some stage they have to push out old equipment, either when it starts entering into its MTBF limits or it's been depreciated down. Searching (using Google of course) wasn't particularly fruitful. Has anyone seen where Google's hardware goes when it dies?"

Comments

If it ain't broke, why fix it?

[tonsofpcs]

I'm guessing that if its actually *DEAD*, they throw it out [read: some lucky employee gets a dead server to putz with], otherwise they probably keep using it in some form or another.

donations or environmental friendly scrapping?

[Anonymous Coward]

When companies are so big such as Google they can't simply throw away their equipment. Probably they're donating the working hardware to schools or communities. Donations are tax deductible in the US, so they're actually saving money while getting free positive publicity.
As for the broken machines, there are companies that make money off getting old hardware from businesses and recycling raw materials, so I think Google is doing the same. Here in europe there are high fines if you're caught throwing polluting stuff (electronic device are filled with polluting materials) without disposing of them properly, and I don't think in the US the law is very different from here.

Re:donations or environmental friendly scrapping?

[doj8]

> If the equipment is old, it's already depreciated and has no basis.

The only computer equipment which is old enough to be depreciated at Google would have had to have been purchased prior to 2001, since computer equipment has a 5 year depreciation schedule. As effective computer lifespans are considered three years among many IT folk, I doubt that a lot of the equipment is fully depreciated before it fails or is superceded by performance improvements. In which case, there is basis and the 21st Century Classrooms Act, signed into law as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-34, Title II B, Sec. 224) comes into play to amplify the tax deduction.

Now, this is all assuming they capitalize the computers. While that would be how many businesses would treat them, Google might expense them. Google may well treat the computers as simply aggregates of spare parts.

There seems to be an assumption that computers are not simply refurbished by replacing any failing components, or broken down for spare parts, discarding the failed components. The accounting complexities of doing such for computers under depreciation boggles my mind, but that's what computers are for.

I doubt there are much in the way of failed "computers" at Google, but a lot of failed components. The components would typically be sent to a recycling firm, which either would be paid to take them away or would pay for the components if there was value to them.

My company only deals with thousands of computers, however, once salvagable components are removed & failed components are sent to recovery, there is little left except empty cases. The plastic components of which are typically waste and the metal is sent to a metal scrap yard when there's enough.

Since I can see little reason for Google to have cases per se (versus mounting brackets for raw components), I could easily imagine that Google doesn't have "computers" per se, but aggregates of motherboards, CPUs, RAM and storage. (If storage is shared, then not even that.)

So, this whole discussion may be moot as Google may simply not have computers per se, just components.

Diversity in hardware

[jurt1235]

Probably the most annoying issue they have with failing hardware, is new versions of the used components, causing incompatility with the old hardware components and the operating system. I imagine they try to keep it running as long as possible by shipping broken machines to a central location and use parts of those to keep the datacenters as coherent as possible. So a setup like one datacenter runs generation-5 years, 2 run generation-4years, 3 run current. This way you can at one moment decide to update a complete datacenter instead of hundreds of machines spread across several datacenters.

Re:Donating

[thelost]

donating sounds like a great idea, till you ask a computer charity about the associated costs. I worked for a place called Computers for Africa, which as you can guess shipped old computers over to africa for schools etc. We also would give refurbished systems to anyone who came and asked. We often had local charities and similar coming.

The problem is that recycling a computer is EXPENSIVE. Shipping an old computer, specially with CRT monitors costs a lot of money. Also, people don't want to take these old clunkers off you, so you end up collecting more and more pentium II 200mhz toasters which you then have to find some way to get rid off. It's not a profitable business. Now of course people will chime in, why doesn't the gov recycle them for plastics etc? Well recycling printers/monitors is really hard to do. It's very expensive and not worth a computer charities time on the whole, if they don't want to go under from the associated cost.

All in all, we (the west) produce so much computer waste that we can't keep track of it or keep ahead of the game. With the amount of people owning a PC sky rocketing, expect to see a whole lot of sad looking computer corpses being crushed at your local dumps.

Re:Donating

[Detritus]

Removal and physical destruction of the hard drive is the only fool-proof way of ensuring that sensitive data is not disclosed to outsiders.

Are you sure that some random third-world country actually wants our old computer hardware? Besides the costs of packaging and shipping, someone has to install new software and test each system. The computers will probably have reliability problems and may not be able to run the software that the recipient wants to run. Does the recipient have reliable AC power? Will the donated hardware run at the local AC voltage/frequency? Is there a program in place to train people how to use the computers? What about unintended consequences, like disrupting the existing supply chain?

You would be better off recycling the hardware and making a cash donation to a reputable aid/development group.

Lead toxicity is greatly overrated.

Re:Donating

[cananian]

Um, he-LLO? MIT is the king of recycling. It's the home of the "reuse" list, where you can find someone to take almost *anything*. We've got student groups dedicated to rescuing ancient macs, dozens of dorm rooms filled with obsolete lab equipment, etc, etc. At MIT you really only have to put your unwanted stuff outside your door with a "reuse" sign on it and it will be snatched up. If you do this and post to the reuse mailing list, then it'll be gone within minutes. And not just electronic stuff: people regularly post food, event tickets, etc, etc, to reuse. It's magic, and a big part of MIT culture. I have to assume that you are new here (and your advisor, too). Learn a bit about MIT culture (especially undergraduate culture) before you are so quick to judge.

Re:Put them on display in a museum

[trentfoley]

I toured google during summer 2006 while on vacation. An old high school friend is an employee, and my family got a private tour. I was able to examine one of these racks up close. I took this photo in the main lobby where we got our security badges. Here's some of the more interesting features:

1) The motherboards are insulated from the rack by a sheet of cork board.
2) The back of the rack is covered by an array of generic case fans all connected with zip-ties.
3) They all used slot-1 pentium2 processors.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the real stuff. Security is insanely paranoid. Even my children had to sign nda's to get their security passes.

My kids were more impressed with the foosball tables, and the free food and drinks located just about everywhere.

you hit the nail on the head

[r00t]

Google has been transitioning to RAM-based storage. With redundant servers around the world, power outages are no problem. RAM is way faster; a disk can only do about 100 to 400 (commonly 200) seeks per second.

Re:Well...

[dreddnott]

I used to work for a fairly large Southern California electronics recycling company, as a hardware testing, asset managing server admin with chicken feed for pay, and we had contracts with some fairly large companies, such as Viewsonic and Dreamworks. I got to see some *very* interesting stuff go through, from all computing eras. As an example, I rescued a Motorola 6800, their very first microprocessor, but I let an Intel 8008 slip by me (we had to work fast!). My company even destroyed a beat-up Dreamworks Silicon Graphics O2 that was named after the original Foonly (Google it!). Kind of depressing. This company has a facility in Placerville as well as SoCal and maybe Google is working with them.

On a good day we could expect to completely shred or rehabilitate 20,000 pounds of electronics, the vast majority being CRT glass, with quite a bit of metal and plastics as well, so I suspect Google's output is not beyond a single company's capabilities. The company philosophy frowned on the idea of sending semi-obsolete equipment to third-world companies for a 'lease on life' as those companies are not really equipped for repair or disposal of dead electronics.

Does Google already use recycled hardware??

[Reziac]

Given their existing parts-swapping policies, and the level of hardware they're using, I'd guess Google doesn't buy much NEW hardware, but rather, probably buys motherboards etc. from the various e-waste recycling outfits -- which charge about 16 cents a pound for sorted motherboards, RAM, HDs, etc. if you buy it in bulk. It only takes one entry-level employee to test such stuff to the "does it power on and boot up? Good enough!" level that is all Google really needs, given their massively-redundant setup.

Just google it!

[u19925]

In google search, type, "Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die?" and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. No, seriously, do it. You will get the right answer.