How Google Routes Around Outages

1sockchuck writes "Making changes to Google's search infrastructure is akin to 'changing the tires on a car while you're going at 60 down the freeway,' according to Urs Holzle, who oversees the company's massive data center operations. In a Q-and-A with Data Center Knowledge, Holzle discusses Google's infrastructure, how it has engineered its system to route around hardware failures, and how it responds when something goes awry. These updates usually go unnoticed, but during system maintenance last month a software bug triggered an outage for Gmail."

Comments

Re:Just me?

[Slumdog]

That's what I was thinking too; and probably just function like an 18-wheeler where a tire can blow out and there's so much support that the load is still distributed adequately.

Basically, all this means is Google designs like Mack while everyone else designs like Chrysler...

I totally agree. Google does have a degree of hype, and infact if you compare their design to Yahoo and eBay, you may find many similarities.

A good amount of online bandwidth is consumed by google, I'd like to see an analysis of redundancy caused by google instead. Recently their search mechanism has gone haywire but noone notices.

It's easy (with a little help from google images)

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I kept thinking about derailing a car, before I realized I was on the wrong track.

It's easy. (With a little help from Google Images...)

Car

Derailer