On 20/01/2012 05:03 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:18:25 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>
>> Sure. But given that computers are very low-power devices, you don't
>> think of a computer plant as something requiring megawatts of power and
>> entire rooms of cooling equipment.
>
> I've done work in a 20,000 sq. ft. data center.  Data centers are big
> business these days.

The biggest data center I've ever been in was one largish room populated 
with server racks.

Heh, I still remember looking at one of the stacks, and seeing that it 
had *seven* 4.2 GB drives in it. (Remember, in 1997, those suckers where 
EXPENSIVE.) I remember feeling slightly giddy trying to compute how much 
total storage space such a monster RAID setup... Ah, the memories.

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On 21/01/2012 05:42 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 1/20/2012 2:18, Invisible wrote:
>> Sure. But given that computers are very low-power devices, you don't
>> think
>> of a computer plant as something requiring megawatts of power and entire
>> rooms of cooling equipment.
>
> So how
> much power do you think it takes to run 50,000 computers, plus air
> conditioning for them, if each has (say) 150W power supply?

As I say, the point is that most people will never see 50,000 computers 
in one place all at once.

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On 23/01/2012 07:23 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:

> Wondering if they are running MS Windows:
>   1. Did they get a rebate on number of license ?
>   2. In case of security update, did they all update&  reboot at the same
> time ?
>
> Obviously, they are not using Apple's computers.

I'm pretty certain it all runs Linux. (I seem to recall a Google paper 
about how they made various improvements to the Linux kernel to handle 
SCSI error conditions better or something like that...) I have no idea 
*which* Linux, of course... It's quite possible that it's something that 
does cost money.

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On 1/15/2012 6:05 AM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>>> And also I'm assuming this is not cheap, so management do not want.
>>
>> Making something truly zero down-time is exceedingly expensive.
>
> Yeah, reducing down-time isn't usually too bad, but /zero/ down-time
> requires going to absurd lengths.

When I was stationed at Onizuka AFB, California (the Blue Cube, for 
those who live or work near the south end of the San Francisco Bay), we 
had two large SATCOM dishes, called Sun East and Sun West.

One chronic problem was that getting downtime for preventive maintenance 
was as difficult as pulling gold teeth from a chicken.  The user 
community (who was and always will be better connected than the 
maintenance community) were as stubborn as mules about allowing any 
downtime for any reason.

"Hey, what if we took each dish down, once every six months, and do all 
of the preventive maintenance specified in the technical orders?"

"No, no, we need those dishes up 24/7.  Denied."

You'll never guess what the result was.

Regards,
John

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:31:05 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> On 21/01/2012 05:42 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 1/20/2012 2:18, Invisible wrote:
>>> Sure. But given that computers are very low-power devices, you don't
>>> think of a computer plant as something requiring megawatts of power
>>> and entire rooms of cooling equipment.
>>
>> So how much power do you think it takes to run 50,000 computers, plus
>> air conditioning for them, if each has (say) 150W power supply?
> 
> As I say, the point is that most people will never see 50,000 computers
> in one place all at once.

That isn't really necessary to be able to do the math....

Jim

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 09:29:40 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> On 20/01/2012 05:03 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:18:25 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>
>>> Sure. But given that computers are very low-power devices, you don't
>>> think of a computer plant as something requiring megawatts of power
>>> and entire rooms of cooling equipment.
>>
>> I've done work in a 20,000 sq. ft. data center.  Data centers are big
>> business these days.
> 
> The biggest data center I've ever been in was one largish room populated
> with server racks.
> 
> Heh, I still remember looking at one of the stacks, and seeing that it
> had *seven* 4.2 GB drives in it. (Remember, in 1997, those suckers where
> EXPENSIVE.) I remember feeling slightly giddy trying to compute how much
> total storage space such a monster RAID setup... Ah, the memories.

Indeed, I still recall that the Fortune 50 company I worked for a decade 
ago had an EMC storage array with 750 GB of storage in it....

My new *laptop* has a drive that big in it.  I've got about 4 TB of 
storage here at home now.

Jim

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:23:08 +0100, Le_Forgeron wrote:

> Le 20/01/2012 18:02, Jim Henderson a écrit :
>>> > 2. I had no idea it required engineering on this scale to run that
>>> > many computers.
>> You've got to manage them *somehow*, right?
>> 
>> 
> 
> Wondering if they are running MS Windows:
>  1. Did they get a rebate on number of license ?

Google?  Run Windows?  No, they use a custom OS AFAICR.

Jim

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>> Heh, I still remember looking at one of the stacks, and seeing that it
>> had *seven* 4.2 GB drives in it. (Remember, in 1997, those suckers where
>> EXPENSIVE.) I remember feeling slightly giddy trying to compute how much
>> total storage space such a monster RAID setup... Ah, the memories.
>
> Indeed, I still recall that the Fortune 50 company I worked for a decade
> ago had an EMC storage array with 750 GB of storage in it....
>
> My new *laptop* has a drive that big in it.  I've got about 4 TB of
> storage here at home now.

The fun thing is, apparently SSD has

1. Reached price levels where Normal Humans can potentially afford them.

2. Reached capacities where you might actually buy this stuff.

Interesting times ahead, eh?

(Personally, I still can't figure out why SSD isn't several /million/ 
times faster than a mechanical spinning disk, but hey...)

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>>> So how much power do you think it takes to run 50,000 computers, plus
>>> air conditioning for them, if each has (say) 150W power supply?
>>
>> As I say, the point is that most people will never see 50,000 computers
>> in one place all at once.
>
> That isn't really necessary to be able to do the math....

Sure, that's the great thing about math; it always works right, unlike 
intuition. ;-)

But it's not a calculation most people would bother to make, because the 
power consumption of a PC is "negligible".

In a similar vein, the heat output of a normal human in a large empty 
room is also negligible. But weirdly, if you put /a lot/ of humans in a 
room, no matter how big that room is, they manage to raise the 
temperature of the whole room. Unexpected, but true...

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On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 15:41:25 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>>> Heh, I still remember looking at one of the stacks, and seeing that it
>>> had *seven* 4.2 GB drives in it. (Remember, in 1997, those suckers
>>> where EXPENSIVE.) I remember feeling slightly giddy trying to compute
>>> how much total storage space such a monster RAID setup... Ah, the
>>> memories.
>>
>> Indeed, I still recall that the Fortune 50 company I worked for a
>> decade ago had an EMC storage array with 750 GB of storage in it....
>>
>> My new *laptop* has a drive that big in it.  I've got about 4 TB of
>> storage here at home now.
> 
> The fun thing is, apparently SSD has
> 
> 1. Reached price levels where Normal Humans can potentially afford them.
> 
> 2. Reached capacities where you might actually buy this stuff.
> 
> Interesting times ahead, eh?

Indeed, I've a friend in Scotland who has a Thinkpad with an SSD in it 
and the performance is good, but the battery life is also quite good (I 
think he said he gets 10 hours out of a single battery).

Jim

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