Coolest Data Center Video Tours

Ever want to see inside the world’s most powerful data centers? We’ve provided a look inside many of the world’s most interesting facilities here at Data Center Knowledge. Here are our picks for five of the coolest video tours of major data centers, along with a list of links to 10 other worthwhile video tours.

These videos provide walk-throughs of data centers operated by Google, Equinix, Terremark, Sun Microsystems, Intel, IBM, Switch Communciations, Wordpress.com, Nvidia, Emerson Network Power, Telecity, the CLUMEQ supercomputing center and Bahnhof.

For many more data center videos, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.

Nope. Joost Didn’t Break the Internet

There was a moment back in 2007 when the appearance of Joost – then known only as “The Venice Project” - would clog network pipes around the globe with its peer-to-peer IP television application. Ars Technica predicted that “the Venice Project will be at the center of net-neutrality debates in the United States in the coming months.” We figured that it would at least boost adoption of 10Gig Ethernet ports at peering and interconnection points.

Joost never emerged as the network apocalypse that many feared, struggling to adapt its technology and business model in the fast-moving video landscape. Today it was announced that Joost’s assets had been acquired by Adconion Media Group. See TechCrunch for the details.

YouTube’s Bandwidth: Cheap, But Not Free

How much is YouTube paying for the bandwidth to deliver its 1 billion page views per day? Credit Suisse says $470 million a year. RampRate says $174 million.  Google says “less than you think.” Now Wired.com asserts that YouTube’s bandwidth bill is zero, citing an analysis by Arbor Networks. The gist of the report is that YouTube has slashed its video delivery costs through the use of peering relationships and its in-house GoogleNet connecting its data centers (assembled through the company’s oft-reported purchases of dark fiber).   

Can Google really be paying nothing to deliver video? Dan Rayburn from the Business of Online Videosays Wired has misinterpreted the statment by Arbor Networks’ Craig Labovitz that ”Google’s transit costs are close to zero.” 

“Transit costs are not the same as bandwidth costs and Wired should know that,” Rayburn writes. He also says that although Google can cut its costs by peering with large ISPs, it’s not likely to strike similar deals with smaller providers.    

1 Billion Page Views A Day for YouTube

Here’s a milestone you don’t see every day: YouTube announced this morning that it is serving more than a billion page views a day. That works out to 11,574 page views per second, and means that YouTube serves up a million page views about every 90 seconds. 

“This is great moment in our short history,” YouTube CEO and co-founder Chad Hurley wrote. What’s the broader significance? Hurley notes that “clip culture is here to stay,” and it’s a trend with huge ramifications for the Internet infrastructure industry. The Internet won’t replace the TV overnight, but entertainment consumption patterns are changing rapidly. As this shift accelerates, it will drive demand for more servers, storage, bandwith and content delivery technology to make it all work smoothly.

YouTube and Bandwidth ‘Myths’

Google’s YouTube team this week decided to address the frequent speculation about the video site’s profitability and infrastructure costs. On the YouTube Biz Blog, Chris Dale and Aaron Zamost adopted a “MythBusters” theme to assert that the speculation is off base. In the process, they addressed (sort of) the estimates of YouTube’s bandwidth expenses. Earlier this year Credit Suisse estimated that YouTube was losing as much as $470 million a year, while RampRate pegged the annual red ink at $174 million.

“It seems people can pick any number to fit any theory they have about our business,” the YouTubers write. “The truth is that all our infrastructure is built from scratch, which means models that use standard industry pricing are too high when it comes to bandwidth and similar costs. We are at a point where growth is definitely good for our bottom line, not bad.”

Dan Rayburn suspects the company is “tired of analysts trying to figure out their costs and one has to wonder if this is the start of Google trying to fight back.” Dan says they’ll fare better if they fight back with data. “Without facts and numbers as compared to the rest of their business, the few data points they gave out don’t provide enough details to debunk anything,” he writes, examining each of the five points addressed by YouTube. And the discussion continues …

One Data Center To Rule Them All

You may not immediately recognize the name Weta Digital. But you almost certainly know its work. Weta is the New Zealand special effects shop that created the computer artistry for the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy and the 2005 version of “King Kong.” The company was co-founded by Peter Jackson, the Academy Award-winning director of the LOTR series.

That kind of digital imagery requires a lot of computing power. Weta recently announced the completion of a new “extreme density” data center featuring HP’s new 2-in-1 server blades, which combines two server in a single energy-efficient blade. Weta is running four computing clusters, each equipped with 156 of HP’s Proliant BL2×220c server blades, which hold spots 219 through 222 on the current Top 500 list of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

Strong Traffic Growth Between US, Latin America

Traffic growth between the US and Latin America grew 112 percent between mid-2007 and mid-2008, far exceeding the growth rate seen in other global markets, according to new data from the telecom research firm TeleGeography. Total international Internet traffic grew 53 percent during the same period, compared to 61 percent growth the previous year.

That growth may explain why Google is planning a data center in Miami, a key connectivity gateway to Latin American markets. That project is part of a broader focus on international expansion by the search giant, which is also investing in undersea fiber capacity and scouting data center sites in Asia.   

Internet Traffic: Growing or Slowing?

“In spite of the widespread claims of continuing and even accelerating growth rates, Internet traffic growth appears to be decelerating.” That’s the verdict from Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota, a specialist in Internet metrics who monitors more than 100 public sources of web traffic data for the university’s MINTS project.

In his mid-year 2008 analysis, Odlyzko notes that estimates of Internet traffic growth are all over the map (even within Cisco, where company white papers describe slower growth rates than executives speeches). Citing that disparity, and the history of problematic growth projections (i.e. “the Internet is doubling every three months”), the MINTS project has focused on aggregating actual data that is available to the public. While many networks keep their figures private, Odlyzko says that MINTS data reflects “a substantial fraction of the world’s Internet traffic.”

The ‘Tiger Effect’ Slows Some Networks

The volume of Flash media traffic on major networks spiked sharply on Monday afternoon, according to Arbor Networks, prompting some ISPs to wonder whether they were under some new type of DDoS attack. “For several ISPs, traffic into their network grew by 15-25%,” noted Craig Labovitz of Arbor, which aggregates traffic data from 70 ISPs around the world through its Internet Traffic Observatory. “In one provider, inbound traffic nearly doubled.”

It turns out that Tiger Woods is to blame. Both NBC and ESPN provided live Internet video of the U.S. Open playoff between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate at Torrey Pines. Arbor’s analysis found that the spikes in Flash traffic correlated closely with key moments in the Tiger-Rocco duel, peaking when Woods prevailed on the 19th playoff hole. Not surprisingly, the largest increases in traffic were seen out of Akamai and Limelight content delivery networks and their upstream providers.

As most golf fans know by now, Woods said Wednesday that he will need surgery to repair the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee, along with the fact that he played the Open with two stress fractures of his left tibia.