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Data Center Overload

Posted by Soulskill on from the so-many-cables,-so-little-time dept.

theodp writes "The first rule of data centers is: don't talk about data centers. Still, the NY Times Magazine manages to take its readers on a nice backstage tour of internet data centers, convincing Microsoft and others to let them sneak a peek inside some of the mega-centers that make up today's cloud. And if it's been a while since you software types stepped inside a real-life computing facility, there's an accompanying data-center-porn slideshow that'll give you an idea where your e-mail, photos, videos, music, searches, and other online services that you take for granted these days come from." Reader coondoggie sends in a related story about a government plan to spend $50 million on improving data center technology.

7 of 88 comments (clear)

  1. We don't need no stinking datacenter by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now that he mentions XBL:
    We here at Xbox Live make the users fiddle with hosting their own sessons and make them pay a subscribtion fee for it too! muhaha.
    Problems with lag, not being able to play with many users in one session, getting everyone disconnected when the host don't want to host anymore? We don't care, we don't have to, we are XBL.

  2. Re:Data Center Overload by Jerome+H · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually I'm pretty bored so I would have read anything remotly related to data centers.

    But now I'm just disappointed.

    --
    int main() { while(1) fork(); }
  3. Data center "porn"? by schamberlin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What's with the trend of calling technical info "porn"? A while ago on Wired, there was an article on "nanotech porn". It really reinforces the stereotype that tech guys are all a bunch of creepy bearded child molesters, whacking off to photoshopped images of Catherine Janeway in their mom's basement.

    1. Re:Data center "porn"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The term implies lack of substance, focus on looks and removedness from real-world scenarios. That is what these slideshows are. There's very little information in them, important details are not shown because they're not visually intriguing and what is shown has almost nothing to do with what it's like to work in a data center (or what scientists working on nano technology are actually doing).

  4. Some people's small world by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Walking home, I ruminated on the number. Sixty-six thousand is the population of a small city Muncie, Ind., for one. Who and where was this invisible metropolis? What infrastructure was needed to create this city of ether?
    Anyone else struck by the open-eyed naivete in this? How does this guy even grow up in the United States and this is a mystery to him? It is the profound ignorance of men like him that is most troubling - and this one is a journalist, supposedly worldly! And this fool has the clout to get Microsoft's GM of datacenters to give him a guided tour of the Xbox facility. "Look, Tommy, here's where your packets mix with those of others" "Gee willikers thanks Mr. Manos!" Is this the level journalists are at? Tourists?

    We have an almost inimical incuriosity when it comes to infrastructure.
    No, buddy, I think from the huge number of programs on our entertainment programs that most people find the subject highly interesting. It's just you and your journalist clique who have an incuriousity to anything not of your own small world. Please stop including me when you say "we".

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    1. Re:Some people's small world by billybob_jcv · · Score: 4, Funny

      HG Wells said it in 1895. The human species will bifurcate into the Morlocks who build machines and technology, and the Eloi who pick flowers. The bad news is that we are the Morlocks. The good news is that we eat the Eloi.

  5. Re:Data Center Overload by Plunky · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe I'm spoiled, but I've seen much bigger, denser datacenters.

    Maybe you have but I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those ... moments will be lost in time, like tears...in rain. Time to die. Wait, what?