With 2.98 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the third-busiest website on the internet and has built an extensive infrastructure to support its massive user base. Since it launched its first company-built and -operated server farm in Prineville, Oregon, in April 2011, the social media platform has not stopped building new data centers and seeking new data center sites. Facebook's data centers house tens of thousands of computer servers -- networked together and linked to the outside world through fiber optic cables.
Facebook has chosen Emerson Network Power to help implement its vision for a "rapid deployment data center" (RDDC) that will combine factory-built components with lean construction techniques, the companies said today.
Facebook is open sourcing its power and water usage dashboards it uses in Prineville, Oregon and Forest City, North Carolina data centers. The code is available in two pieces: the front-end User Interface component and the back-end data aggregator.
Facebook's infrastructure rendered more than 720 million "Look Back" videos and ended up challenging even its own massive infrastructure, during its recent 10th anniversary celebration.
Facebook has begun building a second huge server farm in Lulea, Sweden, and has totally reworked its data center design for the project, embracing factory-built components with IKEA-style lean construction techniques.
Facebook is working on ways to streamline its data center construction, but it hasn't yet decided whether to go the Lego route or try the IKEA approach. The goal is to create a repeatable design for a "Rapid Deployment Data Center" that can work...
Facebook has developed a storage system that packs 1 petabyte of data into a single cabinet filled with 10,000 Blu-Ray optical discs. The company sees potential for Blu-Ray to lower the cost of cold data storage.