R&M Data Center Handbook

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• Yahoo!: The Yahoo! data center is significantly smaller than that of Google or Microsoft. Yet, it can still
be assumed that Yahoo! runs more than 50,000 servers to support their free hosting operation, the paid
hosting services and the Yahoo! store.
• HP/EDS: This company operates a huge data center. Company documentation reveals that EDS runs
more than 380,000 servers in 180 data centers.
• IBM: The area covered by the IBM data center measures 8 million square meters. This tells us that a
very high number of servers is at work for the company and their customers.
• Facebook: The only information available is that Facebook has one data center with more than 10,000
servers. Since Facebook has over 200 million users storing over 40 billion of pictures, it can safely be
assumed that the number of servers is higher than 50,000. Facebook has plans to use a data center
architecture that is similar to Google.
Google, eBay and Microsoft are known users of container data centers, which were a trend topic in 2010,
according to Gartner. Other terms used to describe container-type data centers are:
modular container-sized data center – scalable modular data center (SMDC) – modular data center
(MDC) – cube – black box – portable modular data center (PMDC) – ultra-modular data center – data
center in-a-box – plug-and-play data center – performance-optimized data center – and more
Data center segmentation by center size in Germany, according to the German Federal Environment Agency
(Bundesamt für Umwelt):
Data center type
Server
cabinet
Server
room
Small
center
Medium
center
Large
center
Total
Total number of servers
installed
Percentage of server
clusters
160,000 340,000 260,000 220,000 300,000 1,280,000
12.5 % 26.6 % 20.3 % 17.2 % 23.4 % 100 %
Number of data centers 33,000 18,000 1,750 370 50 53,170
Percentage of all data
centers
62.0 % 33.9 % 3.3 % 0.7 % 0.1 % 100 %
Data Center Inventory in Germany, as of November 2010
See section 2.1.2. for additional data center types.
1.6. Cabling Systems
The communications cabling system is essential to the availability of IT applications
in data centers. Without a high-performance cabling system, servers, switches,
routers, storage devices and other equipment cannot communicate with each other
and exchange, process and store data.
However, cabling systems have often grown historically and they are not fully capable
of meeting today's requirements.
This is because today's requirements for data centers are high:
• High channel densities
• High transmission speeds
• Interruption-free hardware changes
• Ventilation aspects
• Support
Careful, foresighted planning plus the structuring of communications cabling systems should therefore be high on
the list of responsibilities for data center operators. Furthermore, related regulations such as Basel II and SOX
(U.S.) stipulate consistently stringent transparency.
Page 10 of 156 © 08/2011 Reichle & De-Massari AG R&M Data Center Handbook V2.0