Mission Creek

 from computerworld.com

There has been a great deal about Google and its plans for its datacenters and the “dark fiber” it has been acquiring, here is at least the offical ‘party’ line:

Google Inc., typically tight-lipped about the technology behind its data centers, builds its own servers to save money and because standard products don’t meet its needs, the company’s senior vice president of operations said today.

Hardware makers invest heavily in researching and developing reliable products, a feature that most businesses value. But Google doesn’t  need very reliable servers because it has written its software to compensate for hardware outages, said Urs Holzle, speaking at Google’s European headquarters in Dublin.

Instead of buying commercial servers at a price that increases with reliability, Google builds less-reliable servers at a cheaper cost knowing that its software will work around any outages. “For us, that’s the right solution,” Holzle said.

Another reason that Google builds its own servers is equally simple: it can save costs on power consumption…

full story here