Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by netcan on Monday September 08, 2008 @08:02PM
(#298928)
But I too am amazed that old ladies in middle America on fixed income are pretty much 99% of the ad market.
That's not really true of adwords. The whole 'lower-middle wage housewife interested in sweepstakes' persona were the ones that clicked on banner ads, 10 years ago. Anyway, the way ppc adversising is structured these days, 'most clicks' & 'most advertising spending' are not the same thing.
There's an old saying that half of advertising is wasted, but you never know which half.
That's the point of adwords. You know which half. Roughly anyway.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by briansmith on Monday September 08, 2008 @06:36PM
(#298869)
To clarify, GeoEye launched a mapping satellite to use for government and commercial use, and reported Google has an exclusive license whereby no other company can publish the publically imagery in a Google-Maps-style application.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by jwilliams on Monday September 08, 2008 @02:44PM
(#298642)
I think this is a fascinating concept.
That said, I've seen equipment that comes back from vessels and oil rigs. Aside from the sheer messiness of the oil rig, the environment (salt, corrosion, water) can be pretty brutal... Solvable naturally, but a hassle.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by khafra on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @08:54AM
(#299355)
It's good that an entity with the resources and creativity of Google is working on the problem now, so when the oceans rise and separate us into floating colonies with the occasional gilled mutant, we can still get reliable commodity computer hardware.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by fauigerzigerk on Monday September 08, 2008 @03:58PM
(#298730)
That thought crossed my mind as well. But since these installations are so close to shore, workers can be ferried there pretty easily. So they avoid all the trouble and cost that oil companies have with people actually living there.
But what about evacuations in case of bad storms? Have they just invented a new type of outage? :-)
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by yan on Monday September 08, 2008 @06:14PM
(#298849)
I am wondering if this can have any negative ecological side-effects. I know a large issue with nuclear powerplants was them using local rivers for cooling. In the end, they raised the temperature of local lakes enough to make algae produce less oxygen, fish be wiped out, and overall adversely effect water life.
If you put enough of these in close proximity (the wake/wind 'sweetspots'), can they potentially heat up their surroundings enough to make a difference? I understand the ocean is a different beast from lakes, but if you can heat up a square mile, that's a lot of sea life existing in that mile. As quoted, 40MW of power is not exactly little heat.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by danielrhodes on Monday September 08, 2008 @02:04PM
(#298587)
I wonder if they plan to abandon the use of cheap commodity servers for these data centers since the cost of replacing a malfunctioning server becomes much higher.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by hugh on Tuesday September 09, 2008 @12:17AM
(#299085)
Not really that much higher.
It's not like they'd ship a new one out from the mainland every time one failed -- they'd have a huge stack of spares sitting around on the rig and replenish it every now and then.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by jmtulloss on Monday September 08, 2008 @02:25PM
(#298616)
I wonder if it is that much higher. Oil rigs are a long way offshore since that's where the oil is. These just can't hit the bottom, and closer tends to be better. Less cable, easier access, etc.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by newt0311 on Monday September 08, 2008 @03:01PM
(#298662)
Instead of untested wind farms on liners, why not just use nuclear power. It is well tested (think aircraft carriers). Furthermore, while such a reactor may need fuel and disposal services, the wind farms will likely also require spare parts so the self sustenance thing may come out to be even or even in the favor of nuclear. Furthermore, nuclear reactors have a significantly better space/watt ratio allowing for more space for crew and servers.
There are other factors. Wind is intermittent -- not good for servers which have to be active 24/7. To use it would require massive (bigger even than what is already there) batteries which themselves would entail a massive extra cost. Nuclear power also allows easy desalination of sea water which (I assume) would be required for cooling sensitive electronic equipment (expensive servers).
The red tape associated with such an idea would be pretty scary though.
Re:Google's Floating Datacenters (Think Oil Rigs)
by newt0311 on Monday September 08, 2008 @08:45PM
(#298967)
good point. data centers do not have their own military contingent like navy aircraft carriers. Wonder what that does to the cost equation. It seems to be somewhat fixed so if we make this big enough...
One could also try different technologies which make it harder to weaponize the nuclear fuel like pebble bed reactors but then thats never been deployed on a ship.
They are building floating power plants so we can find out what Abraham Lincoln's favorite color is faster!
Now imagine all that is spent on marketing and advertising and imagine google reducing the waste by even a little bit. That's worth a lot.
But I too am amazed that old ladies in middle America on fixed income are pretty much 99% of the ad market.
That's not really true of adwords. The whole 'lower-middle wage housewife interested in sweepstakes' persona were the ones that clicked on banner ads, 10 years ago. Anyway, the way ppc adversising is structured these days, 'most clicks' & 'most advertising spending' are not the same thing.
There's an old saying that half of advertising is wasted, but you never know which half.
That's the point of adwords. You know which half. Roughly anyway.
Wow, I've never seen a scenario where I pictured google on the same side as oil lobbyists.
That said, I've seen equipment that comes back from vessels and oil rigs. Aside from the sheer messiness of the oil rig, the environment (salt, corrosion, water) can be pretty brutal... Solvable naturally, but a hassle.
Who are going to be the sysadmin or security personal working on this data center?
But what about evacuations in case of bad storms? Have they just invented a new type of outage? :-)
If you put enough of these in close proximity (the wake/wind 'sweetspots'), can they potentially heat up their surroundings enough to make a difference? I understand the ocean is a different beast from lakes, but if you can heat up a square mile, that's a lot of sea life existing in that mile. As quoted, 40MW of power is not exactly little heat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havenco
It's not like they'd ship a new one out from the mainland every time one failed -- they'd have a huge stack of spares sitting around on the rig and replenish it every now and then.
Visions of a parrot sitting on someone's shoulder squawking "pieces of RAM".
There are other factors. Wind is intermittent -- not good for servers which have to be active 24/7. To use it would require massive (bigger even than what is already there) batteries which themselves would entail a massive extra cost. Nuclear power also allows easy desalination of sea water which (I assume) would be required for cooling sensitive electronic equipment (expensive servers).
The red tape associated with such an idea would be pretty scary though.
One could also try different technologies which make it harder to weaponize the nuclear fuel like pebble bed reactors but then thats never been deployed on a ship.
http://edopter.com/trends/Offshore_Data_Centers