Google Publishes The Guide to Data Center Book, "The Datacenter as a Computer" 2nd edition

September 5, 2013 Dave Ohara

For newbies it can be hard to learn about data centers. One document that is useful is Google published The Datacenter as a Computer paper back in 2009.

Publication Year

2009

Authors

Luiz André Barroso, Urs Hölzle

The Datacenter as a Computer: An Introduction to the Design of Warehouse-Scale Machines

Abstract: As computation continues to move into the cloud, the computing platform of interest no longer resembles a pizza box or a refrigerator, but a warehouse full of computers….

And in July 2013 the 2nd edition is released.

Notes for the Second Edition

After nearly four years of substantial academic and industrial developments in warehouse-scale computing, we are delighted to present our first major update to this lecture. The increased popularity of public clouds has made WSC software techniques relevant to a larger pool of programmers since our first edition. Therefore, we expanded Chapter 2 to reflect our better understanding of WSC software systems and the toolbox of software techniques for WSC programming. In Chapter 3, we added to our coverage of the evolving landscape of wimpy vs. brawny server trade-offs, and we now present an overview of WSC interconnects and storage systems that was promised but lacking in the original edition. Thanks largely to the help of our new co-author, Google Distinguished Engineer Jimmy Clidaras, the material on facility mechanical and power distribution design has been updated and greatly extended (see Chapters 4 and 5). Chapters 6 and 7 have also been revamped significantly. We hope this revised edition continues to meet the needs of educators and professionals in this area.

The PDF is here. And lots of great diagrams.

One of the parts I liked was the section on modeling for partially filled data centers.

Distribution of service disruption events.

And the closing conclusion.

8.5 CONCLUSIONS

Computation is moving into the cloud, and thus into WSCs. Software and hardware architects

must be aware of the end-to-end systems to design good solutions. We are no longer designing

individual “pizza boxes,” or single-server applications, and we can no longer ignore the physical and

economic mechanisms at play in a warehouse full of computers. At one level, WSCs are simple—

just a few thousand cheap servers connected via a LAN. In reality, building a cost-efficient massive-

scale computing platform that has the necessary reliability and programmability requirements

for the next generation of cloud-computing workloads is as difficult and stimulating a challenge as

any other in computer systems today. We hope that this book will help computer scientists understand

this relatively new area, and we trust that, in the years to come, their combined efforts will

solve many of the fascinating problems arising from warehouse-scale systems.

Mobile Devices set up for a three company competition - Apple, Google, and Microsoft

September 5, 2013 Dave Ohara

With Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia phone devices it looks like there is a three company race against Apple and Google. Phones and Tablets are the growing faster than any other technology device.

One way to think about Mobile device companies is a three company competition. Here is a post on three company competition and its history.

COMPETITIVE MARKETS AND THE RULE OF THREE
by Jagdish N. Sheth and Rajendra S. Sisodia
Strategy | September / October 2002

The “Big Three” no longer have the automobile market to themselves, but almost every market, including the one for cars, is ruled by three dominant firms. That reality does not prevent other firms from being successful. However, all firms, regardless of their market share, must still understand The Rule of Three and how it will affect their strategy and attempt to operate efficiently.

Over the past several years, the world economy, principally in the developed free market economies of Europe and North America, has been characterized by a unique economic phenomena-the combination of mergers and demergers at record levels (demergers are the spin-offs of non-core businesses). As a result, the landscape of just about every major industry has changed in a significant way, moving inexorably toward what we call the “Rule of Three.” The recent economic downturn has slowed but not halted this fundamental evolution, nor has it altered its basic direction.

We note that the Rule of Three is much more than an interesting theoretical construct; it is a powerful empirical reality that must be factored into corporate strategizing. Understanding the likely end-points of market evolution is critical to the ability of executives to develop strategies that will result in success.

Insight into Google Data Center Operations, Site Reliability Presentation at PuppetConf

September 5, 2013 Dave Ohara

I was at PuppetConf 2013 in SF for the first time and had a great time. After the opening Keynote by Luke Kaines, was a presentation by Google Site Reliability Engineer, Gordon Rowell.

Google’s Corporate Engineering SRE team provides infrastructure services used by many of Google’s desktops, laptops and servers. This talk gives an overview of the design philosophy, challenges, technologies and some interesting failures seen while implementing infrastructure at scale.

Speakers

Gordon Rowell

Site Reliability Manager, Google

Gordon Rowell is a site reliability manager at Google, Sydney. His team focuses on delivering services to Googlers around the world. They have migrated major internal services to run on Google technology and are currently focused on removing dependencies on the corporate network. | He enjoys the challenges of building robust systems that scale and has a particular passion for configuration management.

The presentation is here.

Key takeaways I saw are in these slides.

How Servers does Google have? 1 Mil cumulative in July 9, 2008

September 5, 2013 Dave Ohara

Microsoft's exiting CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft has a million servers.

At the Microsoft World-Wide Partners Conference, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that “We have something over a million servers in our data center infrastructure. Google is bigger than we are. Amazon is a little bit smaller. You get Yahoo! and Facebook, and then everybody else is 100,000 units probably or less.”

Google reached its million server cumulative mark in July 8, 2008.

How many servers does Google employ? It’s a question that has dogged observers since the company built its first data center. It has long stuck to “hundreds of thousands.” (There are 49,923 operating in the Lenoir facility on the day of my visit.) I will later come across a clue when I get a peek inside Google’s data center R&D facility in Mountain View. In a secure area, there’s a row of motherboards fixed to the wall, an honor roll of generations of Google’s homebrewed servers. One sits atop a tiny embossed plaque that reads JULY 9, 2008. GOOGLE’S MILLIONTH SERVER. But executives explain that this is a cumulative number, not necessarily an indication that Google has a million servers in operation at once.

When will Amazon reach a million servers? When will Facebook? Is it really that big of a deal. Maybe if you are media and you are looking for a story.

To give you how clueless some people are. Who cares how many servers. The important thing is how many cores are there in the environment? The number of cores and the quality of them is what is important to run services. Not the number of servers. D'Oh.

The next thing that will hit the Data Center Companies, The Truth, The Reality of where their path leads to

September 5, 2013 Dave Ohara

I have been writing about a bunch of other things besides data centers. In some ways what gets discussed in the media about data centers is getting old and boring. So what if Microsoft builds a data center in Finland as part of the acquisition of Nokia's phone devices? $250 mil spent over years is probably a data center in the 10-15MW range with 40% spend on the data center, 40% spent on the equipment and 20% for various other costs to run the data center. Data centers are now discussed broadly in the media. The data center media has morphed as the people have changed jobs or companies have been acquired.

What is up with the data center industry? 6 months ago I would say the big are getting bigger, the small are getting smaller, and the middle is keeping quiet as they find it harder to do business.

What do I say now? The truth in data centers will be driving many changes in data centers. Those who contribute to hype will decrease. To be cost competitive, you need to save money. But making people do more with less, is not necessarily the best way long term if designs are not well thought out. To optimize a solution overall, you need to see the truth of what works and what doesn't. Shaving costs can create a whack-a-mole problem. I have heard of people who reduce their construction costs by eliminating work typically done and making it part of the operations team. Or designs that sacrifice best practices in operation, increasing operating costs and reduces availability.

I have heard rumblings of changes. Data Centers are not easy to run, they can be temperamental if not designed right.

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe