How Google Cools Its 1 Million Servers

1sockchuck writes "As Google showed the world its data centers this week, it disclosed one of its best-kept secrets: how it cools its custom servers in high-density racks. All the magic happens in enclosed hot aisles, including supercomputer-style steel tubing that transports water — sometimes within inches of the servers. How many of those servers are there? Google has deployed at least 1 million servers, according to Wired, which got a look inside the company's North Carolina data center. The disclosures accompany a gallery of striking photos by architecture photographer Connie Zhou, who discusses the experience and her approach to the unique assignment."

Comments

I always thought

[Anonymous Coward]

they use the chilling effect from all those DMCA notices they receive.

Google faked some of the pictures

[Anonymous Coward]

Google faked at least one picture. Take a look at this picture.

The left-hand side is exact copy of the right-hand side. Take a look at the details: The halos from the lights and the texts in the white labels.

Re:Google faked some of the pictures

[swillden]

Google faked at least one picture. Take a look at this picture.

The left-hand side is exact copy of the right-hand side. Take a look at the details: The halos from the lights and the texts in the white labels.

If you read the link with the interview with the photographer you'll find that she's into heavy post-production editing. Arguably, *all* of the images are "faked" to some extent. She takes many shots of each scene and layers them together selectively to get the effect she wants. She clones out stuff she doesn't want (e.g. she mentions removing an exit sign) and clones in stuff she feels is needed to make the image symmetric, and therefore more beautiful. She doesn't worry about barrel, pincushion and perspective distortion in the original shots and does heavy correction of the final images to straighten the lines and make the angles pleasing to the eye. She shot almost all of the images with long exposures in a darkened room, which makes the relatively small LEDs appear to glow intensely and makes their cast light powerful enough to be very visible when in reality it's not very visible at all.

In short, she's interested in beauty more than in fidelity, and does whatever it takes to achieve it. Personally, I think her results are fantastic.

Oblig: Series of tubes

[stevegee58]

So Ted Stevens (may he rest in peace) was right! It really *is* a series of tubes!

Immersion Would Be Better For the Environment

[theshowmecanuck]

I'm really starting to like the idea that they should submerge all their servers in circulating liquid and cool them that way. It could absorb a lot more heat and it would probably make it a lot easier to reclaim the energy from the waste heat. Air has a really low specific heat. It's why they make fluffy down filled jackets; to trap the air which acts as a good thermal insulator (and getting it wet in the winter will kill you if you don't get somewhere warm because liquids conduct/transfer heat better due to greater specific heat).

Re:Immersion Would Be Better For the Environment

[DigiShaman]

As been discussed before, the problem with immersion is the serviceability of the hardware by human hands. Even mineral oil can pose a safety issue in which a technician slips and breaks his/her neck on the floor. Not to mention it's just messy all around. Over time, liquids of any form work their way (via surface tension) in all sorts of places you don't want them being.

Re:They should use the waste heat

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You do understand that the minuscule temperature differential makes this extremely inefficient, right?

Re:Nah

[K. S. Kyosuke]

No, they have an OCD photographer:

I’m obsessed with everything being symmetrical for all my work, so I cloned over the left servers to the right side. It just bothered me that there would be a hole when usually servers would be there. I wanted it to look beautiful, and symmetry is beautiful to me.

Re:Hot aisle containment

[Jstlook]

Their cold air is essentially room temperature, as they're using 80 degrees (presumably F) for that side. So really they've just contained the servers, sucked all the heat out, cooled it down to room temperature, and dumped it back into the room. It's far more efficient because they're not using the servers to heat a whole room / building, then air condition each room for human usage.