Google's Data Center secrets revealed!

by Joseph L. Flatley, posted Apr 2nd 2009 at 2:08PM

After years of secrecy (maybe because they thought no one was interested), Google held its "Data Center Efficiency Summit" yesterday, where the company showed off one of its DCs and custom web servers -- all in a bid to evangelize for energy efficiency. The green angle means that everything has been planned for optimum power use, from the 1AAA shipping containers (sporting over a thousand servers each) that make up the core of its operations, to the servers themselves -- each containing its own 12-volt UPS. This design is said to boast a staggering 99.9 percent energy efficiency, as opposed to a standard centralized UPS setup which at best would only score 95 percent. According to CNet, these are efficiency levels that the EPA doesn't envision as practical until at least 2011. But that ain't all -- hit that read link for the whole sordid affair, but not before you check out the video of a server itself after the break.