This week we'll be taking a look back at 2011, and highighting the trends and stories that mattered. We'll be sharing some of our picks beginning tomorrow. But in assessing the top stories of 2011, we begin with our readers. What were the stories that held your attention this year? Here's our rundown of the 10 most popular stories on Data Center Knowledge this year, ranked by the number of page views they received:
1. How Many Servers is Google Running?
A Google admin works on a server inside a container in one of Google's early data centers. (Source: Google).
Report: Google Uses About 900,000 Servers: Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. As a result, the figure has been the subject of lots of conjecture and speculation. In August a report on Google’s energy use by Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey suggested that the company is probably running about 900,000 servers.
2. Fast & Fierce: The World's Most Powerful Supercomputers
A cool shot of the Tera-100 supercomputer, a Bull-powered system at the French atomic energy agency.
The Top 10 Supercomputers, Illustrated: The twice-a-year list of the Top 500 supercomputers documents the most powerful systems on the planet. Many of these supercomputers are striking not just for their processing power, but for their design and appearance as well. Here's our visual guide to the most powerful machines in the November Top 500.
3. The "Inner Sanctum" of High-Speed Trading
The cages housing customer equipment inside an Equinix data center.
What the New Heart of Wall Street Looks Like: In January the New York Times highlighted the Equinix “New York Four” facility in Secaucus as a “vast technological sanctum” that powers Wall Street's high frequency trading. Equinix has invested more than $260 million building out the three phases of the NY4 data center, which houses the server infrastructure for Direct Edge and other electronic stock exchanges. It’s part of a cluster of data centers in northern New Jersey that drive trading operations that are remaking the financial markets.
4. Swimming Servers in Action
Green Revolution's Immersion Cooling in Action: High-density cooling specialist Green Revolution Cooling has developed technology which submerges servers in a liquid similar to mineral oil. The Austin, Texas startup said its cooling enclosures can eliminate the need for CRAC units and chillers, allowing users to cool high-density servers at a fraction of the cost of traditional racks. In April we featured photos of the system in action.
5. Steve Jobs Reveals the iDataCenter
Steve Jobs Provides a Look Inside the iDataCenter: In June Apple CEO Steve Jobs offered a glimpse of its huge new data center in North Carolina as it announced its much-anticipated iCloud cloud computing service, which will allow iTunes users to store music, photos and documents in Apple’s data centers. "We’re going to move the digital hub, the center of your digital life, into the cloud," said Jobs, who passed away in October . "If you don’t think we’re serious about this, you’re wrong."