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The Digital Cloud
January 24, 2012 By Ulf Wolf
Much of today’s computing, not to mention data storage, takes place in the “cloud.” Although I, as you, of course know better, I still now and then think of this cloud as, yes, up there. Airborne. This everywhere thing.
Mostly though, when I think of the cloud, I think of its size. It’s hard-to-get- my-wits-around size.
Take Google’s YouTube for example (which just achieved the equally hard to fathom milestone of four billion viewings per day), and the fact that anyone in the world can upload HD videos up to fifteen minutes long to their hearts’ content. Given that each minute takes about 100 Megabytes of storage, the 15 minute HD video will occupy in the neighborhood of 1.5 Gigabytes.
Should you need to upload longer videos, you simple need to confirm that you are the account holder by entering your mobile phone number so Google can send you a confirmation code as a text message; enter that code and, viola, you can now upload 3-5 Gigabytes files to YouTube—again, pretty much to your heart’s content.
To me this wonder has always raised two questions: How much storage does Google actually have in its “cloud” and how on earth can they afford to dish out these enormous amounts of storage for free?
At the same time I often wish I had their server account.
Takoma, Washington
As to the second question, I think the answer is Google's ridiculously successful AdWords, which shows no signs of slowing down or of generating less income for the Search Engine giant.
As to the first question, Google is pretty mum about exactly how many server farms they have and what their total capacity is. Three years or so ago the widely circulated rumor was that they had approximately 450,000 servers, and my guess is that this number may well have tripled, if not quadrupled, since then.
In 2010 one industry pundit estimated that Google’s cloud consumed as much electricity as the entire city of Takoma, Washington (population approx. 200,000), and that, to me, is quite the picture.
But when you consider the energy needed to not only operate, but to cool a million or so high-powered computers, it does not seem so farfetched.
For Google, these server farms are life and death, and they take that end of the business very seriously. They build their own high-efficiency power supplies, and conduct fascinating, public research on disk failure.
Two other consideration when you establish server farms of this size and capacity is the external climate—the cooler year-around average temperature the better—and availability of inexpensive power.
Sweden and Finland
This is why Facebook, as reported in October 2011, announced that they were building an enormous server farm facility in Lulea in northern Sweden (Lulea is situated at the northern tip of the Baltic Sea, just over 62 miles South of the Arctic Circle).
According to a The Telegraph article by Richard Orange, the Lulea climate will allow Facebook to use only air for cooling their servers.
Said Mats Engman, chief executive of the Aurorum Science Park, which is leading the push to turn the city into a 'Node Pole', “If you take the statistics, the temperature has not been above 30C [86F] for more than 24 hours since 1961. If you take the average temperature, it's around 2C [35.6F].”
According to the same article, “Taking advantage of the rock bottom temperatures, Facebook plans to build three giant server halls covering an area the size of 11 football fields.
“Even though they will rely on air cooling, keeping the servers humming will still require 120MW of power, enough to supply 16,000 detached homes, and costing some $70 Million a year.
“These power needs will be met by renewable electricity generated by dams on the nearby Lulea River.”
Engman went on to say, “The Lulea River produces twice as much electricity as the Hoover Dam does, so 50 per cent is exported from our region. There is a surplus of energy, and we can supply more data centers in this area easily.”
Engman pointed out that the Facebook's engineers were also attracted by the reliability of the local power grid, which has been built to supply the area’s thriving iron, steel and paper industries, as well as by Sweden's dense fiber-optic network.
Spearheading the move into colder climates, Google, in 2009, bought a disused paper mill in Hamima in southern Finland, and is now building a server farm. Again, very good server-farm climate, and lots of cheap, local hydroelectric power.
Companies by Servers
So, how big is the "cloud?"
A recent cursory survey of various computing giants and the total size of their server farms rendered this, albeit incomplete, list:
- Intel — 100,000
- OVH — 80,000
- SoftLayer — 76,000
- Akamai Technologies — 73,000
- Rackspace — 70,000
- 1&1 Internet — 70,000
- Facebook — 60,000
- LeaseWeb — 36,000
- SBC Communications — 29,000
- Verizon — 26,000
- Time Warner Cable — 25,000
- AT&T 20,000
- iWeb — 14,000
- Peer1/ServerBeach — 10,000
This, of course, does not include the companies that do not share this information, such as Google.
Another such company is Microsoft which was estimated to run 200,000 servers mid-2008. Microsoft’s new Chicago container farm will hold an additional 300,000 servers.
Amazon and eBay run at least 50,000 servers each, as does Yahoo.
GoDaddy, IBM, and HP/EDS most likely belong to the 50,000+ servers club as well.
And we know that this server explosion is showing no signs of slowing down.
Some cloud.
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