Have you visited any data center before? Word is that such places have the best-kept secret of a company. In an era where some of the biggest companies are super-conscious about the data and the servers storing these data, Google has somewhat surprised us by unlocking the doors of its own server rooms to the public.
No, don’t start packing your bags yet. Chances are, you won’t be allowed to barge into Google’s data center unless you are one among those handful of privileged Google employees. But the good news? You can take a virtual tour to view the private data centers of Google right from the comfort of your home.
Tour Data Center Virtually With Street View
The Google’s data center located in Lenoir, a city in North Carolina (US), can be viewed with Street view. This is the first time Google has given us a pass to virtually witness what’s inside their data center. Interestingly, the place is guarded with Star Wars Imperial Stormtrooper.
After this video you will find the link to virtually visit Google’s data center:
- Link #1: Visit Google’s data center in Lenoir
- Link #2: Visit Google’s data center in Lenoir [Google Maps]
Requests are routed to the right servers at the Networking Room.
Data obtained from Google products are collected and stored in the server room. The room is stationed in an entirely different floor which Google calls it as Server Floor.
Here, the original and copies of our data are stored. For instance, all our hosted videos on YouTube are available on these servers. Even your email messages are squeezed in this floor’s servers. Billions of searches that happen everyday on Google search engine are also stored here.
Data Protection
Google protects the collected data through various ways. The email messages it stores are constantly scanned against viruses and malware threats.
To ensure the data is accessible wherever we go, Google always stores data on at least two servers. Another copy of the most important data goes on digital tapes.
Whenever any hard drive breaks, the contents are completely erased and the hard drive is destroyed to avoid data theft.
From the Google blog post:
Fourteen years ago, back when Google was a student research project, Larry and Sergey powered their new search engine using a few cheap, off-the-shelf servers stacked in creative ways. We’ve grown a bit since then, and we hope you enjoy this glimpse at what we’ve built.
Google delivers billions of search queries every day, has over 200 million smartphone users, and houses millions of businesses in the cloud.
To support this and much more of its upcoming services, Google generates 260 million watts of energy, which is equivalent to the power used in 350,000 homes. If you didn’t know this yet, Google generally runs their offices and data centers on renewable energy.
Google also houses a new data center in Finland which uses a seawater cooling system to reduce the electricity cost.
Access Google Data Center on Smartphone
We receive 25% of traffic from smartphones. And if you are currently reading this post on your mobile phone, I’d recommend you to visit Link #1 to view the data center. The link works just fine — although bit sluggish at times — on iPhone and iPad.
[spoiler title=”List of Google’s data center” open=”0″ style=”1″] Google’s data center location in America
- Berkeley County, South Carolina
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Douglas County, Georgia
- Quilicura, Chile
- Mayes County, Oklahoma
- Lenoir, North Carolina
- The Dalles, Oregon
Google’s data center location in Asia
- Hong Kong
- Singapore
- Taiwan
Google’s data center location in Europe
- Hamina, Finland
- St Ghislain, Belgium
- Dublin, Ireland[/spoiler]
