7

What kind of hardware does Google use?

  • Exclusively Intel processors? Always?
  • Xeons, Duos, or Quads?
  • Intel chipsets?
  • motherboards - Intel, Gigabyte, MSI?
  • What kind and build of RAM?
  • What physical memory configuration (single large capacity modules or multiple smaller capacity modules)?
  • What brand of HDD (I know they used to buy almost all the brands - from their disk failure report)?
  • Were they able to implement a single voltage power supply for their servers (like they had been pushing for a long time to Intel)?

Any other trivia you have or would like to share?

3
  • 2
    This would fit better on Serverfault.com or SuperUser.com
    – Brandon
    Jul 20, 2009 at 17:42
  • People shouldn't move conversations from StackOverflow or ServerFault to SuperUser.com while it's still in better. It's fracking annoying to be posting a decent answer to something in one side, and then bam, it's closed and locked up in a site I can't access. What if the author himself doesn't have access to the site?
    – Chris K
    Jul 20, 2009 at 18:22
  • @darthcoder ServerFault is no longer password protected. Try clearing your cookies etc. and accessing it - it'll let you right in.
    – ceejayoz
    Jul 20, 2009 at 18:44

5 Answers 5

12

Lots of these:

Servers

2
  • this was pretty much the defining article for me
    – MikeJ
    Jul 21, 2009 at 1:01
  • 1
    the link seems to be dead. Mar 27, 2019 at 23:39
10

Take a look at Google platform.

1
  • 1
    mmmm.... Server Pr0n Jul 20, 2009 at 18:31
2

This is pretty neat discription.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html

1

If you want commercially available hardware that's very similar to what Google does (DC power supplies, stripped down systems, ultra high density) then check out SGI/Rackable's Cloud Rack product line.

0

Have you tried contacting Google themselves? Seems to me anything else is probably just guesswork.

1
  • 1
    Google are notoriously silent about their data centers or configurations, hence all the guesswork ;) Jul 21, 2009 at 1:03

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