Data Center Overload 88
theodp writes "The first rule of data centers is: don't talk about data centers. Still, the NY Times Magazine manages to take its readers on a nice backstage tour of internet data centers, convincing Microsoft and others to let them sneak a peek inside some of the mega-centers that make up today's cloud. And if it's been a while since you software types stepped inside a real-life computing facility, there's an accompanying data-center-porn slideshow that'll give you an idea where your e-mail, photos, videos, music, searches, and other online services that you take for granted these days come from."
Reader coondoggie sends in a related story about a government plan to spend $50 million on improving data center technology.
We don't need no stinking datacenter (Score:4, Insightful)
Now that he mentions XBL:
We here at Xbox Live make the users fiddle with hosting their own sessons and make them pay a subscribtion fee for it too! muhaha.
Problems with lag, not being able to play with many users in one session, getting everyone disconnected when the host don't want to host anymore? We don't care, we don't have to, we are XBL.
Data center "porn"? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's with the trend of calling technical info "porn"? A while ago on Wired, there was an article on "nanotech porn". It really reinforces the stereotype that tech guys are all a bunch of creepy bearded child molesters, whacking off to photoshopped images of Catherine Janeway in their mom's basement.
Re:Data center "porn"? (Score:4, Insightful)
The term implies lack of substance, focus on looks and removedness from real-world scenarios. That is what these slideshows are. There's very little information in them, important details are not shown because they're not visually intriguing and what is shown has almost nothing to do with what it's like to work in a data center (or what scientists working on nano technology are actually doing).
Re:Data center "porn"? (Score:2, Insightful)
It also makes it harder to view the articles at work, especially when you have to explain why the word shows up in your proxy logs...
Re:Data center "porn"? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to mention the inanity of using the word "cloud". This also suggests that tech guys are a bunch of dumb, unthinking, corporate drone, buzzword-spouting jerks. Whereas, in fact, we all now that's marketing people. So the word "cloud" shouldn't be used on /. at all (along with blogosphere or any similar alpha-simian corporate-speak). Unless of course "cloud" refers to water vapour in the sky, or a spaceship called cloud, or something similar.
It's really quite simple. If you use buzzwords you are a dick, not a geek.
Some people's small world (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else struck by the open-eyed naivete in this? How does this guy even grow up in the United States and this is a mystery to him? It is the profound ignorance of men like him that is most troubling - and this one is a journalist, supposedly worldly! And this fool has the clout to get Microsoft's GM of datacenters to give him a guided tour of the Xbox facility. "Look, Tommy, here's where your packets mix with those of others" "Gee willikers thanks Mr. Manos!" Is this the level journalists are at? Tourists?
We have an almost inimical incuriosity when it comes to infrastructure.
No, buddy, I think from the huge number of programs on our entertainment programs that most people find the subject highly interesting. It's just you and your journalist clique who have an incuriousity to anything not of your own small world. Please stop including me when you say "we".
Re:Data Center Overload (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe I'm spoiled, but I've seen much bigger, denser datacenters. I have some pictures that I'm not suppose to have. This looked like a fairy tame facility, nothing I'd be impressed by.
Try Equinix Ashburn VA, Equinix Chicago, Level3 New York, One Wilshire Los Angeles, or a dozen others that I've been in that I don't feel like listing out right now. These pictures could have been out of any of dozens of mom and pop datacenters I've been in around the country. If you were standing in one section, and all you see is cages and densely stacked equipment in all directions, and 100 feet away there's a door that leads to the next section that's the same, followed by another door that leads to the same, then you're looking at a dense datacenter. If you look into a cage and just see an entire row of Cisco 8500's, that are feeding adjoining racks and cage space, plus transit fiber and in/out fiber, that's impressive. I was at InterNAP Seattle, which is a smaller facility, but the next cage space to the one I was working in was a row of maybe 15 racks, each stuffed with 40 1u SuperMicro servers. Behind that, 8 more rows exactly the same. Every one of them had drive and network lights blinking away. On the other side, across a row, 3 rows of 20 racks stuffed with Dell 1u servers. In the next room it was the same. In the next suite, WaMu sign decorated the doors, but secure access was required to get to through the door. Someone in the building told me they had toured the suite and it was floor to ceiling and wall to wall equipment. In a suite down the hall? Microsoft. They had a similar configuration. another suite down the hall, probably at least 10,000 sq/ft, they were building out new space for Microsoft. The building was shut down one day just so they could airlift air conditioners to the roof for the new space (I have YouTube video of part of the airlift).
In Los Angeles, I don't know who owned the space, but it was their laser printer room. They had blinds on the window (like, cheap residential blinds). I peeked through a gap and saw racks full of laser printers. It belonged to a bank, I just don't know which one. In the basement, heavily armed security escorted armored trucks in and out of a vehicle trap (double steel roll gates), so I never saw what was inside, and judging by the weaponry it was a bad choice to approach a guard while they were outside the gate. I kept my distance, and they didn't threaten me. That was just one floor.
One customer I knew of on another floor there started out with a dozen racks of 1u servers (stuffed 40u). Their hosting business grew. Then it grew more. I talked to them and they really knew what they were doing. A small staff that knew what they were doing, but a huge business, the perfect blend. Last time I was there, I walked the outside of their cage area and if I recall correctly, I gave up counting at a few hundred racks, each stuffed with 1u machines, except the occasional rack that held the redundant switches for that section.
If I had pictures of everything I've seen, that would make for an impressive display. Most facilities have strict "no recording devices of any sort" rules. No cameras, video recorders, cell phones with cameras, etc. It's probably fine to know that a huge hosting company is as big as they say, but what if you're told that you're hosting with a huge company, to find that their "datacenter" is just a rack at a mom and pop place, and their rack is populated by 1/2 dozen old desktop PC's stacked on each other? Intelligence gathered from a DC can be dangerous. Some places put stickers on with the hostname and IP of every unit. So, if Mr. Evil Hacker (not me, of course) knows X hosting has 4 xisco x500 routers and 8 xisco x590 switches, all labeled, and looking at the photos he can follow the cables through and sees that the routers at 1.2.3.4 and 1.2.3.5 (public IP's) are the only incoming connections so he start looking harder and fin