Comments on: Facebook Follows Google to Data Center Savings

By: Google’s green energy usage exposed | tech PANELS

Google’s green energy usage exposed | tech PANELS — Sat, 10 Sep 2011 07:04:55 +0000

[...] at least 2009, Google and its chief rival for internet dominance Facebook have increasingly been attempting to build up their green credentials. The steps which have been taken largely centre around the [...]

By: Google’s green energy usage exposed | memeburn

Google’s green energy usage exposed | memeburn — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:30:35 +0000

By: Sustainable Technology » Blog Archive » Facebook Data Center Power Distribution - Leadership in the efficient use of computing resources.

Wed, 18 May 2011 21:09:39 +0000

[...] Data Center Knowledge: Facebook Data Center Share and [...]

By: data center operator

data center operator — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:33:03 +0000

my quick take on this is that it defies physics to expect a bunch of very small battery systems (associated with small transformers, rectifiers, etc) to peform more efficiently that one (or two, if 2N) large scale systems. scale drives efficiency – smallish & distributed designs drive inefficiency. also, i totally agree with last post that batteries are an especially troublesome point of failure. this approach would make no sense but for virtualization, where in theory, the loss of a single physical server can be absorbed due to logical failover to other servers. in the real world, many or all DCK readers know that it doesnt always work that way and the best way to avoid cascading failures is to avoid the first one

By: Gary Anderson

Gary Anderson — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:06:33 +0000

Both Google and Facebook have taken the approach of propagating the most prominent point of failure (batteries) onto every server, which is problematic because the batteries fail regularly without notice. In order to make this approach work, a few key features need to be in place: (1) there needs to be significant redundancy in the software systems to ensure that battery or power failures don’t degrade the services provided; (2) there needs to be a strong service program in place to check, test and replace batteries that are no longer functioning; and (3) batteries have high sensitivity to temperatures, so any application needs to consider the tight control of temperatures for the battery application.

By: SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 30, 2009

SearchCap: The Day In Search, November 30, 2009 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 22:00:15 +0000

[...] Facebook Follows Google to Data Center Savings, Data Center Knowledge [...]

By: Peter Buck

Peter Buck — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:03:07 +0000

I’m finding it frustrating that no overall efficiency gain was given. Since data centers are a significant contributor to the world power budget (over 1% in the US and surely well above that worldwide), potential efficiency reductions like this are welcome news, especially since the power requirements for data centers are projected grow by more than an order of magnitude by 2020 (http://www.greentechmedia.com/green-light/post/data-center-power-consumption-by-the-numbers-341/).

By: Rich Miller

Rich Miller — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:19:48 +0000

Um, guys … You had to be anonymous for that? The announcements from the Data Center Summit were plenty real. We noted the oddness of the April 1 scheduling, but the summit was a day long event witnessed by many of the world’s leading data center experts. For what it’s worth, Google also introduced Gmail on an April 1. I’m pretty sure Gmail is real.

By: anon

anon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:05:29 +0000

Um.. guys.. that article about Google they linked to was published on April 1st… April fools anyone???

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:34:56 +0000

@Cellar as if any large numbers of servers at Google and Facebook run windows.