Technical > Photos of Broadband gear > Googles Servers

Googles Servers

Neat article. I remember a thread on Webhosting Talk about their servers mentioning the board they are using in those.

reply to Jameson
Thank you for posting this.

reply to Jameson
I actually saw this in practice in one of the data centres a couple of years ago
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Erik - Caneris - Internet solutions and more.

reply to Jameson
I was supprised to learn that they actually buld the UPS right into each server by placing a battery in them.

Anyways just though you guys & gals ( ) would find it interesting.

reply to Jameson
Here is a video tour of one of Google's DCs:

reply to Jameson
Can anyone tell me where I could get a PSU that has the red and black wire coming out of it for the battery backup.

I don't understand how they're powering the hard drives. I don't see any wires coming from the PSU and going to the hard drives.

reply to Jameson
I'm quite sure they don't normally exist. Google probably had these built specifically for their application.

No idea on the hard drives. Probably a cable somewhere just can't see it.

Look a little closer... that large red wire is going to the battery over on the right.

The entire psu is solid 12v, so more than likely that board you see right under the sata drives takes in the 12v and converts is to a pass-through 12 and 5v for the drives.

As from the article "Power supplies convert conventional AC (alternating current--what you get from a wall socket) electricity into the DC (direct current--what you get from a battery) electricity, and typical power supplies provide computers with both 5-volt and 12-volt DC power. Google's designs supply only 12-volt power, with the necessary conversions taking place on the motherboard."

reply to Jameson
I give it a couple years and we'll soon now be seeing servers/comps with standard battery backups build directly into them like this. It would be nice as it's much more efficient than inverting 12V up to 110V only to be down converted to 12V and lower once again.

I use similar techniques on wireless sites and telecom sites I work on. Everything is standardized on either a 48V or 24V battery grid that can support the system for nearly a week without any additional power. Compared to that of perhaps an hour if it was done with traditional UPS systems.
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Justin - DSLR resident grouch and Mr Negativity
TSI Fanboy - "Dontchya wish your 'net was hot like mine! Ohhh Dontchya!"
Have a nice day!

reply to noobfragger

reply to PunkGod
those are standard SATA drive with standard SATA 12v/5v/3.3v power plugs in them.

they don't seem to have an orange 3.3v wire going to them.... which is no big deal as standard sata drives don't require it.

reply to kewlkeed
The other great thing about this design is that it distributes failures. During a blackout, a few of the UPSs won't work, which is fine -- they continue running with a slight loss of capacity.

We're all familiar with data centers where the centralized UPS turns out to not work during a blackout and everything goes dark.

bet every 3 - 5 years suck though, lol