Google: Tour in the data center with a video in 4K to 360°
Google publishes a 360-degree video that allows you to make a virtual visit to the Data Center located in The Dalles (Oregon).
It is not the first-time Google opens the doors of its data centers, allowing the public to technology enthusiasts and the simply curious to know what it looks like the place where, in all probability, a more or less substantial fraction of their personal data it is routinely guarded.
The video recently posted on the Google Cloud Platform channel, presents some elements for certain new aspects, not so much for the substance, and by its architecture. It is a 360° video with 4k resolution. We recommend wearing the VR low-cost Cardboard viewer to complete the best guided tour, or you can take action on the virtual pad in the upper left corner.
Google emphasizes the attention paid to the issues of privacy and security – with stringent checks carried out since the main entrance and continue inside by the use of biometrics – the commitment to manage in an efficient and sustainable the center, without missing to show, in concrete terms, the amount of servers and fiber-optic cables that deal with custody and transfer data. A power of superabundant calculation, which ensures the possibility of maintaining the service unchanged even in case of loss of an entire cluster.
The environment shown from minute 2:00 and following, to make the idea, it’s just a single cluster of a single plane, a single data center. Multiplied on a global scale, the cluster gives rise to a dense network of nodes customizable according to specific needs, for example by requiring the integration of multiple machines within the cluster.
A computing power which is exploited in the first place, for the Google Cloud services management. Each data center, which can accommodate up to 75,000 machines and transfer over a data petabit the second is connected to other Google data centers located worldwide through B4, the private network managed by Bigg and constantly expanding.
From the minute 4:40, you can look at the place where the personal data of users who access Google services are physically stored: an army of HDD and SSD that is routinely monitored to correct the physiological malfunctions.
Eventuality which, without causing data loss, thanks to the systems that allow you to clone them quickly, raises, at the same time, the problem of disposing and recycling of the storage unit, the activities to be carried out avoiding accidental spread user data. To achieve this, they format media in a safe manner and subsequently destroyed (see. Min 5:00).
Towards the end of the movie, you can take a look to the cooling system, a key element in ensuring the continuity of data center operation. An environment inside which, by means of two main circuits, the exchange occurs between the hot air coming from the plane in which are placed the server, and that fresh produced by the plant.
Last stage is that the energy plant, which uses the energy produced by multiple hydroelectric plants and includes emergency generators to continue to power the servers in case of failure.
