Google's Strategy of Using Images to tell the Data Center Story works

This morning I got a chance to chat with the Google folks about their blog post announcing an inside look at their data centers.  Google had successfully used video to tell the story of send.  Videos are good, but I've always been a still image type of person.  One of the ideas we discussed is the power of images.  The images are a status of what is seen.  When you show images people use their own perspectives to evaluate the truth of the image. 

If you go to the original Google post by Urs Hoelzle it is not long.  The images shared tell a much bigger story.

One image from street view is this blue curtained area.  What is behind the curtain?

One of the funnier ones is where the writer focused on the stormtrooper.

Google Stormtrooper Guards Company's Data Center Secrets In Street View (PHOTOS)

The Huffington Post  |  By Catharine Smith

Upon closer inspection, the trooper appears to be accompanied by a miniature R2D2. (Google, you old prankster, you.)

Here are a few more links that give you an idea of the range of interpretations.

 

Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center

Wired - ‎13 hours ago‎

Beautiful photos of Google's data centers will blow your mind

TechSpot - ‎4 hours ago‎

A Google technician working on some of the computers in the Oregon data ...

Sydney Morning Herald - ‎48 minutes ago‎

Google Razzle Dazzles With Data Center Display

TechNewsWorld - ‎2 hours ago‎

Finally, We Can See What Google's Brain Looks Like

Business Insider - ‎10 hours ago‎

Google Reveals Data Center Photos

Government Technology - ‎8 hours ago‎

Google Lets Photographer Into Secretive Data Centers, Beautiful Photos Ensue

PetaPixel - ‎6 hours ago‎

The Five Coolest Things We Learned from Google's Data Center Tour

The Atlantic Wire - ‎6 hours ago‎

Google opens data center Kimono: Why cloud players will follow

ZDNet - ‎11 hours ago‎

Google data center HD photos hit “Where the Internet lives” gallery

SlashGear - ‎3 hours ago‎

Google Data Center: How Google Broke Its CRAC Habit (VIDEO)

Latinos Post - ‎59 minutes ago‎

Google Data Center Tour Videos, one by CBS

Getting a tour of data center is not possible.  Unless you are Steven Levy or CBS's Michelle Miller.

Here is the CBS Video.

Behind the cloud: A tour of Google's secretive data facilities

And here is the Google posted YouTube video for comparison.

Who is the tour guide for these privileged two?  Urs Hoezle.

Miller spoke with Google's senior vice president of technical infrastructure -- and one the company's first employees -- Urs Holzle, who is charged with running all of Google's data centers. He is known within the industry as the infrastructure czar.

Holzle showed Miller Google's networking room, the first place Google requests are routed before heading to the server floor, which houses 55,200 servers. Miller's visit was the only time they'll allow cameras on the server floor, but in an effort to promote transparency, Google will now sharevideos and pictures of all of their data centers on their website.

Note this last sentence.  "Google will now share videos and pictures of all of their data centers on their website."

How much pressure does that put on Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and the rest of the data center industry?

For those of you going to 7x24 Exchange Phoenix we'll hear more as Google's Joe Kava keynotes on Tues.

Keynote:
Google Data Centers: A Behind the Scenes Look at Infrastructure and Innovations

Google's data center practice helped develop the company's competitive edge for online services and products. Now, nearly seven years after the first data center went into production, there is an ever increasing need to be creative in order to drive efficiency and minimize the impact on the planet. This presentation hopes to uncover some of Google's early day decisions, why they were made and how those decisions led to future innovation. Take a virtual tour with us of our facilities and join the discussion of what challenges we all face in the industry.

Joe Kava
Senior Director
Google Data Centers

Google uses World Class Photography to tell the Data Center Story

What goes on in the data center is a mystery to many.  We have all been in numerous data centers.  In general taking pictures is not allowed and you are left to explain what is going on with words.  What if you allow a world class photographer to tell your data center story?

Google took this approach using Connie Zhou as a photographer.  Photos allow one image to tell a story that can be interpreted many different ways. Yet, all these interpretations are truths.  Trying the equivalent in words.  One image can show how well organized a facility is, how well organized the facility is, and show a design approach used to solve design issue which accounts for up front costs and operating cost.

Google has a blog post on an inside look of its data centers.

Google’s data centers: an inside look

October 17, 2012

Very few people have stepped inside Google’s data centers, and for good reason: our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close guard. While we’ve shared many of ourdesigns and best practices, and we’ve been publishing our efficiency data since 2008, only a small set of employees have access to the server floor itself. 

Today, for the first time, you can see inside our data centers and pay them a virtual visit. On Where the Internet lives, our new site featuring beautiful photographs byConnie Zhou, you’ll get a never-before-seen look at the technology, the people and the places that keep Google running. 

The server floor in Council Bluffs, Iowa

 If you are a person who likes words you can read Wired's Steven Levy article here, but even he starts out with a great picture.

Google Throws Open Doors to Its Top-Secret Data Center

• BY STEVEN LEVYEMAIL AUTHOR
• 10.17.12
• 7:30 AM

Photo: Google/Connie Zhou

If you’re looking for the beating heart of the digital age — a physical location where the scope, grandeur, and geekiness of the kingdom of bits become manifest—you could do a lot worse than Lenoir, North Carolina. This rural city of 18,000 was once rife with furniture factories. Now it’s the home of a Google data center.

One of the pictures i like is this one.

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If you click on the image, the story about the picture is told.

Denise HarwoodHardware Operations

Surrounded by the deep blue lights of our servers, Denise Harwood diagnoses an overheated CPU. It's half of her job as a repair technician to help keep equipment up-and-running at all times. The other half is working on the data security team, making sure what goes into our centers is thoroughly protected. 

Denise discovered her Google job in a unique way. “It was through playing Dungeons and Dragons,” she says. While playing the game, she met a Google employee and discussed future work plans. “I had originally planned to get a degree in literature, but later changed my major to Computer Science,” she says. After graduating, she applied to our data center in The Dalles, Oregon, where she now works as part of a 150-person team.

If you want to read the words behind each image then click on the image.

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Note not all the images have stories behind them.  The below is the Hamina data center's sea water cooling system.

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One area that many would be concerned is data management, but you don't really want to open up the access doors to the tape back-up system and have HD staged to demonstration the crusher.  Showing these pictures is so much easier. 

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A secret to enjoying life, live now like the ancients retired - friendships and reflection are priceless

While I was on 4 days of vacation I ran across a WSJ article that got me thinking.   The WSJ article was down this path.

The 'New' Old Age Is No Way to Live

The ancients had it right: Reflection and friendship are the bounties of old age

...

We are advised that an extended life span has given us an unprecedented opportunity. And if we surrender to old age, we are fools or, worse, cowards. Around me I see many of my contemporaries remaining in their prime-of-life vocations, often working harder than ever before, even if they have already achieved a great deal. Some are writing the novels stewing in their heads but never attempted, or enrolling in classes in conversational French, or taking up jogging, or even signing up for cosmetic surgery and youth-enhancing hormone treatments.

What happens when you don't consider this advice and you are focused on your accomplishments?  You treat your friends as tools in the games you play.

Epicurus also wrote: "Of all the things that wisdom provides to help one live one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship." Even back in the Athens of the third century B.C., he could see how a professional life of any kind could corrupt genuine friendship. A life engaged in business inevitably leads to treating other people as means to an end, rather than as ends in themselves.

Do you live your life like this?

Tasso feels no need to manipulate, exploit or in any way maneuver his companions to do anything. No, Tasso simply wants his friends to be with him.

One of the things I enjoy about the data center industry is finding the people who think like the above where reflection and friendship are valuable.  Why?  Because, when you want to figure out some really tough things you need insight and friends who will tell you the truth.  

There are plenty of people who will tell you what you want to hear and lying is just part of playing the game.  

Joyent CTO discusses data center as Information Factory

Joyent's CTO Jason Hoffman just presented on the idea of data centers as Information Factories. at GigaOm Structure Europe.  Here is my post on the same concept of data centers as information factories 3 years ago.

Can you Green the Data Center? Maybe if you think in terms of an Information Factory

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2009 AT 3:14AM

I have been writing on the Green Data Center topic for over 2 years with 1,000 blog posts. And, one of the things I have found is the name “data center” is not an accurate description to the layman of what data centers do. Are data centers the “center of data”?  In the past there was one corporate building that was the place where data was housed for the corporation. The standard for Fortune 500 companies now is to have multiple data centers around the world to provide information availability, disaster recovery, and reliability. How can there be multiple centers of data? If you green the data center what am I supposed to green? These multiple centers?  How?

You can see Jason's video here.

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