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Google Businesses The Internet

Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die? 123

Posted by Cliff from the and-can-I-go-dumpster-diving dept.
An anonymous reader asks: "I was talking with a co-worker today about how Google is so big, and how they make such great use of commodity hardware to do their business, and one of the topics that came up is what Google does with its old hardware. Google has been around for many years now, they have more machines than any sane person would own, and they are continually expanding. At some stage they have to push out old equipment, either when it starts entering into its MTBF limits or it's been depreciated down. Searching (using Google of course) wasn't particularly fruitful. Has anyone seen where Google's hardware goes when it dies?"
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Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die? More

Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die?

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  • Duh (Score:5, Funny)

    by TodMinuit ( 1026042 ) <todminuitNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday January 20, 2007 @07:26AM (#17693490)
    /dev/null

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by nazsco ( 695026 )
      On a talk gave by Craig Nevill-Manning here in brazil, he bragged about changing >1000 ups modules on their servers daily.

  • If it ain't broke, why fix it? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tonsofpcs ( 687961 ) <slashback@NOSPAm.tonsofpcs.com> on Saturday January 20, 2007 @07:41AM (#17693540) Homepage Journal
    I'm guessing that if its actually *DEAD*, they throw it out [read: some lucky employee gets a dead server to putz with], otherwise they probably keep using it in some form or another.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Clazzy ( 958719 )
      You've got a good point there, especially if you think about hard drive space with Gmail. I'm sure Google will keep hold of their hard drives wherever possible to give them more space/more redundancy.

      • Re:If it ain't broke, why fix it? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @09:13AM (#17693872) Journal
        You've got a good point there, especially if you think about hard drive space with Gmail. I'm sure Google will keep hold of their hard drives wherever possible to give them more space/more redundancy.

        The way hard drives have been getting cheaper and more compact, that doesn't always make economic sense. At some point the cost of storage, cooling, electricity, maintenance, etc. is too much and you're better off using that new machine that can handle 100 times the data for the same overhead costs.

        If electricity, rent, air conditioners, and sysadmins were free...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
          Older systems can connect to newer hard drives. I don't know how much hard drives figure into this though, I think RAM size is a bigger factor so the computer knows where the data is without wasting too much time looking for it.
          • Older systems can connect to newer hard drives.

            for howe long, the timeline the GP indicates "you're better off using that new machine that can handle 100 times the data " is easily read as literal,

            an original XT with a 20 megabyte hard drive could also take a 40.. but it wasn't ever going to work with a multi-gigabyte drive.

            look backwards..
            if google had been supported by XT's, 1000's of them.. and then the next wave of hardware, 20 gigabyte hard drive. came out- or, sata, or sas, or usb....

            At the point

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Reziac ( 43301 ) *
              Cheapest solution at present is to equip your old hardware with an IDE or SATA controller card, and let the *card* handle the HDs that the existing motherboard can't see. More cost-effective than replacing a whole rack, when all that's needed to upgrade it is more HD space.

        • about 5 years ago, it was reported that the downturn to the W. American Economy allowed Google to skip the harddrive and switch to pure ram. Combine that with linuxbios, and you have a fairly low cost energy system that is not likely to wear out quickly as it will not use huge amounts of energy. Afterwards, they simply sell or give away the motherboards.

          • Interesting concept, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform [wikipedia.org] seems to contradict that.

            Ram is still rather expensive compared to hard drives for data which isn't accessed very often, even when the operating costs are factored in. Sure, much of Google's data *is* accessed often, but much of it *isn't* as well. Just think of all those emails in people's gmail accounts that sit in the inbox for years upon years.

    • Re:If it ain't broke, why fix it? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hotdiggitydawg ( 881316 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:14AM (#17693660)
      Actually, they leave it in the rack and mark it offline. Only when a large number of servers are history do they bother taking out the trash. That's the glory of well-managed commodity hardware!
    • Yeah, it's not clear to me that they discontinue using a lot of hardware.

      Just about 1 year ago, I heard from someone in the know that they were still running tons of Pentium Pro servers, simply because they delivered a slight edge in terms of performance-per-watt over servers with more modern processors. I imagine that surprising anachronism is largely due to the fact that a lot of what they do is I/O-bound rather than CPU-bound. Don't know if they're still using those...

      I would guess that Google *does*
  • Well at least once its dead...

  • As most reckon that Google does no evil!

    Short of that, I dunno, maybe they go to Valhalla, heofan, paradisum, or they join a heap of rubbish in China.

  • Obvious (Score:5, Funny)

    by blowdart ( 31458 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @07:51AM (#17693586) Homepage
    Windows Live Search.

    Seriously I'm sure it would depend on what dies. A disk drive would get thrown and replaced, a motherboard frying is more serious (but of course you can rescue the memory and media). The nice thing about scaling out rather than up is that as newer hardware comes along you don't need to replace the old stuff; so why through something out unless it's dead beyond recovery, in which case it's useless to anyone and off to the recycler it goes.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pipatron ( 966506 )
      Because sooner or later (with computers: mostly sooner), a new computer will do the work much faster than 10 old computers, saving a lot of money on energy, rent, support and cooling. Even if they actually work, it makes more sense to replace N older computers with one new.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by PipOC ( 886408 )
        This probably won't happen until 64-bit software gets more acceptance, because the memory density of google's current hardware is already maxed at 4 GB to a 32-bit machine. 64-bit machines can adress a whole lot more memory, which they'll need to if they move from 400 mhz machines to 2 GHZ machines.

  • donations or environmental friendly scrapping? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:05AM (#17693634)
    When companies are so big such as Google they can't simply throw away their equipment. Probably they're donating the working hardware to schools or communities. Donations are tax deductible in the US, so they're actually saving money while getting free positive publicity.
    As for the broken machines, there are companies that make money off getting old hardware from businesses and recycling raw materials, so I think Google is doing the same. Here in europe there are high fines if you're caught throwing polluting stuff (electronic device are filled with polluting materials) without disposing of them properly, and I don't think in the US the law is very different from here.

    • Re:donations or environmental friendly scrapping? (Score:5, Informative)

      by anthony_dipierro ( 543308 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @09:03AM (#17693846) Journal
      Probably they're donating the working hardware to schools or communities. Donations are tax deductible in the US, so they're actually saving money while getting free positive publicity.

      Actually, donations of depreciated property are not really deductible, because your deduction is limited to your basis. If the equipment is old, it's already depreciated and has no basis. See http://www.msk.com/csl_files/325861.pdf [msk.com].

      • Re:donations or environmental friendly scrapping? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by doj8 ( 542402 ) <doj-sdNO@SPAMnewww.com> on Saturday January 20, 2007 @01:09PM (#17695352) Homepage
        > If the equipment is old, it's already depreciated and has no basis.

        The only computer equipment which is old enough to be depreciated at Google would have had to have been purchased prior to 2001, since computer equipment has a 5 year depreciation schedule. As effective computer lifespans are considered three years among many IT folk, I doubt that a lot of the equipment is fully depreciated before it fails or is superceded by performance improvements. In which case, there is basis and the 21st Century Classrooms Act, signed into law as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (P.L. 105-34, Title II B, Sec. 224) comes into play to amplify the tax deduction.

        Now, this is all assuming they capitalize the computers. While that would be how many businesses would treat them, Google might expense them. Google may well treat the computers as simply aggregates of spare parts.

        There seems to be an assumption that computers are not simply refurbished by replacing any failing components, or broken down for spare parts, discarding the failed components. The accounting complexities of doing such for computers under depreciation boggles my mind, but that's what computers are for.

        I doubt there are much in the way of failed "computers" at Google, but a lot of failed components. The components would typically be sent to a recycling firm, which either would be paid to take them away or would pay for the components if there was value to them.

        My company only deals with thousands of computers, however, once salvagable components are removed & failed components are sent to recovery, there is little left except empty cases. The plastic components of which are typically waste and the metal is sent to a metal scrap yard when there's enough.

        Since I can see little reason for Google to have cases per se (versus mounting brackets for raw components), I could easily imagine that Google doesn't have "computers" per se, but aggregates of motherboards, CPUs, RAM and storage. (If storage is shared, then not even that.)

        So, this whole discussion may be moot as Google may simply not have computers per se, just components.
        • The only computer equipment which is old enough to be depreciated at Google would have had to have been purchased prior to 2001, since computer equipment has a 5 year depreciation schedule

          Good news -- my accountant recently told me that some computer equipment is now three years. Check with yours to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by doj8 ( 542402 )
            > Good news -- my accountant recently told me that some computer equipment
            > is now three years. Check with yours to make sure I wasn't imagining things.

            That would be good news. As I am my own accountant (private, not public), I'll have to check the newer rules with the IRS. As of the latest version of the IRS publication 946 ("How to Depreciate":

            2. 5-year property.
            a. Automobiles, taxis, buses, and trucks.
            b. Computers and peripheral equipment.

    • Donations not so Simple (Score:5, Informative)

      by Cassini2 ( 956052 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @10:18AM (#17694126)
      You have to watch what you donate and give away to employees. You want to give away equipment that can still be maintained in a usable state. Once, I had to get rid of a bunch of obsolete monitors, and a group of employees were actively requesting them. Instead, I donated them to an Electrical Engineering professor at a local college. He tested each of them before doing anything with them. One caught on fire and caused a serious mess. Big problem! The Electrical Engineering professor was skilled (and ready) for this sort of thing, so it was okay in the end. If I gave these monitors to employees, their houses could have burned down!!!

      Lesson: If you give untrained employees or volunteer organizations equipment, make sure it works! Sure you can give the stuff away with a "no guarantees" label. However, your employees are still expecting "safe" equipment that reasonably works. Unless you are confident that you are giving away "good" kit, only send the equipment to trained professionals.
    • My brother-in-law is a buyer for a company here in Australia, which buys massive lots of older computers and parts to sell to India, Malaysia, etc - countries that need a lot of hardware for their growing number of call centres, etc, but can't afford current-generation equipment. There's a pretty big market for working older machines. I'd guess that Google would sell their old hardware to someone like that, or if they use equipment until it dies, they pay to have it recycled or scrapped as cleanly as possi

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Having once worked for an electronics recycling firm (which shall remain nameless), I can say at least SOME of the equipment is salvaged and resold overseas, what can't be sold, is processed for precious metals recovery. Very little of what gets to the recycler is donated, any donations would have to be made by the client (Google in this case) prior to shipment. On a side note, a little off-topic, refuse disposal in the US is largely left up to the states to administer, many of which tend to follow federal
      • You didn't work for trueCycle [truecycle.com], did you?
        When I worked there we didn't do any international resale of salvaged/repaired electronics, but we did quite a bit of eBay sales in the United States. I can also confirm what you say about refuse defined by point of origin. We had that difficulty once or twice when differentiating California and out-of-state waste for state billing.

  • And then (Score:5, Funny)

    by Konster ( 252488 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:20AM (#17693672)
    Most of the old hardware gets sold to MSN and Yahoo. Really old hardware gets sold to MS for use on .Net dev boxes. The newer stuff gets sold to MS for MSN search, but that's only if they have 640k of memory.

  • We buy crap (Score:4, Informative)

    by Dion ( 10186 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:21AM (#17693674) Homepage
    In the words of a googler: We buy crap.

    I'm willing to bet that once the hardware is too crappy for Google, that it's completely useless for anyone remotely sane.

    Look for completely broken hardware at recycling places.

  • Diversity in hardware (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:22AM (#17693678) Homepage
    Probably the most annoying issue they have with failing hardware, is new versions of the used components, causing incompatility with the old hardware components and the operating system. I imagine they try to keep it running as long as possible by shipping broken machines to a central location and use parts of those to keep the datacenters as coherent as possible. So a setup like one datacenter runs generation-5 years, 2 run generation-4years, 3 run current. This way you can at one moment decide to update a complete datacenter instead of hundreds of machines spread across several datacenters.

  • Have you tried asking google (Score:4, Funny)

    by antifoidulus ( 807088 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:37AM (#17693734) Homepage Journal
    as opposed to slashdot? One may have a clue, the other can make beowulf cluster jokes. Which do you prefer?

  • I've heard... (Score:5, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @08:45AM (#17693766) Homepage
    The guys from the Wayback Machine come round and archive it.
  • but running an IT recycling company in the UK, you've just give a great idea! *g*

  • Why should they throw it out (Score:4, Insightful)

    by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @09:35AM (#17693966)
    Seriously, think about it. As long as it doesnt break down, the machine can still get search/indexing/crawling jobs, or take over part of the distributed storage network. Its already installed, its working, and even if its slower than the others, the system google is using doesnt really depend on individual machine speed.

    And after it broke down, they are going to dispose them, i guess.
    • At some point, the cost of rackspace and power consumption will be out of proportion when compared to the performance of newer machines.
      I guess Google's Pentium 4 based machines (if they have some of those) will eventually lose out to Core2Duo and Athlon64 that way.

  • Donating (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dheera ( 1003686 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @10:16AM (#17694114) Homepage
    I think it is an absolutely horrid thing of current American society that so many people always run after new stuff and never even bother to think about others when dumping old stuff. I've seen companies trash hundreds of computers (yes, actually trash them... because the HDD has sensitive data and because of taxes). I think that this should somehow be stopped. One way would be to heavily charge for the disposal of things containing lead, and remove all taxes for donations of educational supplies to needy institutions within the US or abroad.
    That way, companies can do a good zeroing of their hard drive and then send off the PC to an organization that will take it to Africa, India, China, or somewhere else with a shortage of computers. Seriously, kids in Africa who have never touched a computer before would really be able to make use of a lot of thrown-out pentium-1, 90mhz systems. It's not funny that US society just trashes this stuff. It's such a wasteful thing to do in this world.

    My supervisor (remaining unnamed) had a laboratory cleanup and hesitated throwing away anything - he almost put a cordless phone in the trash before I had to grab it out of his hands! The thing has lead in it, and for gods sake works! Some poor kid could use that thing in this world, and not everyone is as rich as he is to be throwing away a working phone! They also threw out this giant heavy "Communications Biophysics" plastic poster. I had to yank that out of facilities because it is recyclable. (Welcome to MIT. I wish people recycled more and thought about the world a little more here before they ran around inventing stuff.)

    • Re:Donating (Score:5, Interesting)

      by thelost ( 808451 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @11:11AM (#17694482) Journal
      donating sounds like a great idea, till you ask a computer charity about the associated costs. I worked for a place called Computers for Africa, which as you can guess shipped old computers over to africa for schools etc. We also would give refurbished systems to anyone who came and asked. We often had local charities and similar coming.

      The problem is that recycling a computer is EXPENSIVE. Shipping an old computer, specially with CRT monitors costs a lot of money. Also, people don't want to take these old clunkers off you, so you end up collecting more and more pentium II 200mhz toasters which you then have to find some way to get rid off. It's not a profitable business. Now of course people will chime in, why doesn't the gov recycle them for plastics etc? Well recycling printers/monitors is really hard to do. It's very expensive and not worth a computer charities time on the whole, if they don't want to go under from the associated cost.

      All in all, we (the west) produce so much computer waste that we can't keep track of it or keep ahead of the game. With the amount of people owning a PC sky rocketing, expect to see a whole lot of sad looking computer corpses being crushed at your local dumps.
      • The problem is that recycling a computer is EXPENSIVE. Shipping an old computer, specially with CRT monitors costs a lot of money. Also, people don't want to take these old clunkers off you, so you end up collecting more and more pentium II 200mhz toasters which you then have to find some way to get rid off. It's not a profitable business. Now of course people will chime in, why doesn't the gov recycle them for plastics etc? Well recycling printers/monitors is really hard to do. It's very expensive and not

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      Removal and physical destruction of the hard drive is the only fool-proof way of ensuring that sensitive data is not disclosed to outsiders.

      Are you sure that some random third-world country actually wants our old computer hardware? Besides the costs of packaging and shipping, someone has to install new software and test each system. The computers will probably have reliability problems and may not be able to run the software that the recipient wants to run. Does the recipient have reliable AC power? Will

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vakuona ( 788200 )
        Actually, 1 true random should make data unrecoverable by just about all means.

        You do not have to install software on them. You could just give them Linux CDs for them to install themselves, with a nice instruction manual.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by supabeast! ( 84658 )

      I think it is an absolutely horrid thing of current American society...

      Well, as soon as you find the billions of dollars it would take to clean all of this old hardware up, package it, transport it to and American port, ship it to an African port, transport it to a new site in Africa, unpack it, set it up, and actually teach people how to use it, you should be able to convince all these horrible American businesses to do so. Don't forget about finding power and offices/data centers to use the computers in--

    • Re:Donating (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cananian ( 73735 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @12:47PM (#17695196) Homepage
      Um, he-LLO? MIT is the king of recycling. It's the home of the "reuse" list, where you can find someone to take almost *anything*. We've got student groups dedicated to rescuing ancient macs, dozens of dorm rooms filled with obsolete lab equipment, etc, etc. At MIT you really only have to put your unwanted stuff outside your door with a "reuse" sign on it and it will be snatched up. If you do this and post to the reuse mailing list, then it'll be gone within minutes. And not just electronic stuff: people regularly post food, event tickets, etc, etc, to reuse. It's magic, and a big part of MIT culture. I have to assume that you are new here (and your advisor, too). Learn a bit about MIT culture (especially undergraduate culture) before you are so quick to judge.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dheera ( 1003686 )
        Yes, I go to MIT. I'm all on top of reuse myself and live by it. Half the stuff in my room comes from reuse.

        For those of you who know MIT, I'm basically complaining that far too many people at MIT do NOT use reuse. Food goes to waste more often than it shows up on free-food, and computers get trashed more often than show up on reuse. I've found more free 17" LCD's that work (marked "trash" and left in a dumpster) than have ever shown up on reuse. This is the reality. People need to learn about reuse.

        Many su

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cananian ( 73735 )
          At various times there have been poster campaigns to educate people about reuse. It sounds like you might be motivated to start another one. Ask around on the reuse related lists; I'd be surprised if there weren't poster pdfs already stashed away somewhere.
      • For a similar idea in your local area, check out FreeCycle [freecycle.org]. From the website:

        When you want to find a new home for something -- whether it's a chair, a fax machine, piano, or an old door -- you simply send an e-mail offering it to members of the local Freecycle group.

        Or, maybe you're looking to acquire something yourself. Simply respond to a member's offer, and you just might get it. After that, it's up to the giver to decide who receives the gift and to set up a pickup time for passing on the treasure.

    • Back in my Carnegie Mellon days, any old hardware that had outlived its usefulness would get put out in the hallways for students to pilfer. "Hallway Rule" they called it.. It was well known enough that in the instances where things had to be stored in the hallway that were NOT meant to be given away, professors would put numerous signs saying "NOT TRASH- DO NOT REMOVE" on them.
      So, the moral is, Google simply needs to find a sufficient hallway.
    • I think it is an absolutely horrid thing of current American society that so many people always run after new stuff and never even bother to think about others when dumping old stuff. I've seen companies trash hundreds of computers (yes, actually trash them... because the HDD has sensitive data and because of taxes).

      It's often been my experience that, with computers, things old enough to be thrown away by one user are too old for other users to want.

      For example, I stripped the good hard drive out of one of
      • you can make a good firewall with the 200MHz system by using a minimal installation of Linux or best OpenBSD. Add an extra ethernet card and it can be your router and you won't have to buy a Linksys/DLINK stuff. you can use this as a web server as well simultaneously. That way if you like to use Windows you will be more secure than earlier.
        You can add a good gaming card that is supported on your PC, install Linux and play games like FlightGear which need basic CPU but a good GPU.
        If you are an electronic

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dheera ( 1003686 )
          Oh, and not to mention, a 90Mhz system is PERFECTLY GOOD enough to learn basic Linux concepts, shell scripting, C, C++, Perl. There are millions of poor children in 3rd world countries dying to learn computer science. They don't need DirectX and 1 GB of RAM. Even the internet isn't prerequisite. They need ANYTHING that will run an interpreter or compiler.

          So please, consider this. Even old 486 laptops with no HDD and which will run a stupid Knoppix boot CD will serve the above purposes.
          • Testing and shipping computers from the first world is more expensive than buying used computers locally. Third world countries do have demand for computers, and there are companies that meet that demand at very low cost.

            That explains why there are no groups soliciting donations in the US. It's better to recycle the computer and just give money to an NGO that buys computers on the local market.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unitron ( 5733 )
        Email me at coastalnet.com about that handheld scanner.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by b1scuit ( 795301 )
      Here Timbatwe, Google sent you a computer! Let's plug it in to the... oh.
      • I just got the mental image of Mind of Mencia when Mencia "sends" a N64 to a Honduran kid.

        All was said was "Screw You Mencia".
    • I think it is an absolutely horrid thing of current American society that so many people always run after new stuff and never even bother to think about others when dumping old stuff.
      Not always, e.g., freecycle.org [freecycle.org] seems to have originated in the USA.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by hasbeard ( 982620 )
      I just disposed of the first computer I ever bought. It was an HP Pavilion 7955 with a 1.5G Pentium 4, 768 meg memory, and a 40GB hard drive. I bought it at the end of 2001 I think when Windows XP first came out. A Google search helped me find a good home for it. I gave it to a project called HandyCable Networks located in Greensboro, North Carolina (US). This group utilizes disabled people who refurbish the computers and give them to needy people. What they can't fix they strip of usable parts and rec

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dheera ( 1003686 )
        Good. I honestly respect you for doing that.

        Oh, and to the poster above who asked if 3rd world countries would want our PC's, the answer is YES. I know this myself, because I have been to those countries. They would be happy to get their hands on any such hardware. Software is a matter of time and learning, which they can handle. When the majority of 3rd world schools don't even have computers anywhere in the school, a simple donation of a 200Mhz PC goes very far. 200Mhz is seriously good enough to browse m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )
      A few issues:

      1. Donated items are already fully tax-deductible for their true value at time of donation. Granted, for a 4-year-old PC that is probably $50, and for something that doesn't work the value is probably even lower.

      2. If items are going to get donated it would probably be to a local charity like a thrift store - no shipping costs. But, that works great for a Mom and Pop company - not so much so for a major corporation like Google. I'm sure their local thrift store would tell them to buzz off
  • I too would like to know ... where you can get an ex-google harddrive with inside details of the non-published alterations to their algorithms.

    Let me know.

    Thanks
  • Well, I heard there are 2 guys doing their phd in a garage who ask google for their old hardware..
  • Google has been around for many years now, they have more machines than any sane person would own

    Well if that isn't the understatement of the day, I don't know what is...

  • Put them on display in a museum (Score:5, Informative)

    by JoeCommodore ( 567479 ) <larry@portcommodore.com> on Saturday January 20, 2007 @12:10PM (#17694910) Homepage

    Like this early rackmounted array of Google servers [portcommodore.com] which was displayed at the Vintage Computer Festival in 2005 [vintage.org] and now is (I believe) on display at the Computer History Museum [computerhistory.org] (which is worth the effort to tour if you are near the Palo Alto/Mountain View California Area.

    From my write-up about the rack: The rack in the picture holds 4 standard Pentium II Motherboards per level and has a total of 80 Linux (2.0) servers per rack. Since they were standard MBs they had to get creative with things such as wiring and insulation (which was, in this case, cork-board.) The panel shows the server room as well as talks about the fire dangers of doing such a design. (Google is a neighbor to the Computer History Museum BTW). (closeup) [portcommodore.com]

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by MsGeek ( 162936 )
      Too cool! Very, very creative. Spit and bailing wire blade servers! This is why I can't hate Google, they really are stone cold geeks who made good. Who else but a geek would build something like that!

    • Re:Put them on display in a museum (Score:5, Interesting)

      by trentfoley ( 226635 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @04:11PM (#17696504) Homepage Journal
      I toured google during summer 2006 while on vacation. An old high school friend is an employee, and my family got a private tour. I was able to examine one of these racks up close. I took this photo [trentfoley.com] in the main lobby where we got our security badges. Here's some of the more interesting features:

      1) The motherboards are insulated from the rack by a sheet of cork board.
      2) The back of the rack is covered by an array of generic case fans all connected with zip-ties.
      3) They all used slot-1 pentium2 processors.

      I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the real stuff. Security is insanely paranoid. Even my children had to sign nda's to get their security passes.

      My kids were more impressed with the foosball tables [trentfoley.com], and the free food and drinks located just about everywhere.
    • As far as I can tell, there are only 3 such racks on display: one in the Googleplex lobby, one in the Computer History Museum and one that is shipped to expositions here and there. Our balance is still off by several hundred racks... Where did the other ones go?

  • machines done die, they just get rebuilt (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20, 2007 @12:28PM (#17695026)
    I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the google campus once and i asked them about thier server and what they run, etc. One of the most surpising things i found out is that most of thier servers dont have cases. They do this so its super easy to swap out hardware if something dies and to perform any upgrade that may be needed. If a part dies, they can yank it out and replace it without even having to take the server out of the rack. The dead part simply get tossed in the trash and the server continues serving its merry a** off. To me that means thier servers never 'die', they just constanly get new parts and the parts that do die are so dead you wouldnt want them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ziegast ( 168305 )
      I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the google campus once and i asked them about thier server and what they run, ... The dead part simply get tossed in the trash

      It must have been some time ago. Dumping electronics in the trash is now illegal in Santa Clara, California.

      If I had the buying power of Google, I would make my vendors replace and recycle any and all dead components for me at no cost to me. Forced recycling might also give vendors more incentive to make their components last longer.

      -ez
      • Given their existing parts-swapping policies, and the level of hardware they're using, I'd guess Google doesn't buy much NEW hardware, but rather, probably buys motherboards etc. from the various e-waste recycling outfits -- which charge about 16 cents a pound for sorted motherboards, RAM, HDs, etc. if you buy it in bulk. It only takes one entry-level employee to test such stuff to the "does it power on and boot up? Good enough!" level that is all Google really needs, given their massively-redundant setup.
  • Why cant they just sale it for a fraction of what they bought it? I mean really most people don't NEED the newest greatest thing. You can hire a couple of guys who sit in a warehouse all day just testing the hardware. Then you can either format the hard drives or replace them with $20 hard drives and sale them. You could even bundle like groups of 25 computers or monitors and sale them bulk to people or companies that can't afford all new hardware. Then if your good enough at it people will come back when t

    • Re:Sale It (Score:4, Insightful)

      by doj8 ( 542402 ) <doj-sdNO@SPAMnewww.com> on Saturday January 20, 2007 @01:19PM (#17695428) Homepage
      There is nothing to sell.

      This whole discussion is moot as Google simply does not have computers per se, just components. There are no cases, no monitors, just motherboards, CPUs, RAM and, maybe, storage. There's no reason for video, sound, peripherals either.

      All of the components would be run until they fail. They would be not usable at that point. Nor would they be counted as a "computer," only an aggregate of parts. The failed component would be replaced and the rest kept on working until some other component fails. Effectively the "computers" would be immortal, but the components would be perpetually replaced.

      • Re:Sale It (Score:5, Funny)

        by HughsOnFirst ( 174255 ) on Saturday January 20, 2007 @04:23PM (#17696568)
        "CPUs, RAM and, maybe, storage. "

        Oh, I imagine there is at least some storage involved...
          Unless they cache the internet in ram
        • Google has been transitioning to RAM-based storage. With redundant servers around the world, power outages are no problem. RAM is way faster; a disk can only do about 100 to 400 (commonly 200) seeks per second.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by vakuona ( 788200 )
          They apparently do. How do you think they serve you results so quickly. Because that stuff is all in RAM. Try searching for stuff on your own PC now. See how long it takes to get meaningful results. Now search on Google. They did not query a database on some HD there. The whole thing is in RAM.
        • "CPUs, RAM and, maybe, storage. "

          Oh, I imagine there is at least some storage involved...
              Unless they cache the internet in ram


          You joke, but this is Google....
  • the hardware never dies, it just gets taken or runs away to a farm in the country like our dogs and cats when we were kids.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Duds ( 100634 ) *
      We live on a farm. It got bloody crowded.

      I think we had your dog. He's dead now, sorry.

  • Look... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Monday January 22, 2007 @01:44PM (#17712576) Journal
    I bet there's a big landfill site somewhere near Google HQ, but its probably really low resolution in Google Earth...

    B

  • Just google it! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by u19925 ( 613350 ) on Tuesday January 23, 2007 @02:35PM (#17726512)
    In google search, type, "Where Does Google's Hardware Go to Die?" and click the "I'm feeling lucky" button. No, seriously, do it. You will get the right answer.

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