GBTV #495 | Inside the Data Center
Posted on: January 14, 2009
Posted in: Video
Posted by: Cali Lewis
Shownotes:
It isn’t typical that someone is allowed to bring a camera into a secure data center. John P., the CMO at Layered Tech either broke some rules or pulled some strings so that we could take a tour and bring you along. The part we couldn’t show is the layers and layers of security we had to get through to get to the server rooms.
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January 14th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Thanks so much Cali and a bigger thanks to John who let us in! Awesome to see!
January 14th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Can you please show the last bit of the Data Centre on the next brief please!
January 14th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Did the woopra.com site go down because of this video?
January 14th, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I always love seeing datacentres, I’ve worked in them for almost 10 years but it never gets old…
The biggest kick was always taking a customer on a tour and seeing the look on their faces when they first see it, especially if you switch the lights off and wander up the aisles with all the lights flickering (especially if the servers are all identical so it all matches).
When you throw the numbers at them for power consumption and go through all the redundant systems they realise why paying for proper hosting is preferable to running their business off their DSL line…
Looks like pretty standard colo these days, no sealed aisle or high density (25kw+) racks?
The Woopra system looks pretty efficient as that’s a reltaively small numbwr of servers for a real-time system monitoring so many sites.
Well done to Woopra and Layered Tech!
January 14th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
GREAT Video Cali!
That is so cool to see the inner workings. I am amazed that they let you in! =-)
Your videos are SO good!
David Foster
January 14th, 2009 at 7:34 pm
WOW. Pretty cool stuff! Thanks guys for your hard work!
January 14th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
My dream workplace :) http://tinyurl.com/aygl4k
January 14th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Nice tour of a datacenter: http://tinyurl.com/aygl4k
January 14th, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Andrew,
This particular area where we took Cali and Neal was all fairly homogenous. No cages or cabinets because it’s a “non-client” area. All of the servers are owned and managed by Layered Tech.
There are however other areas in the DCs that have colo space with more security between rows and racks so that clients only gain access to their specific equipment. However, LT does very little pure co-lo, so not much of that.
As far as the Woopra servers are concerned, they are extremely efficient. Fewer than 20 physical machines currently track all of the stats and they have a lot of spare capacity.
Russ,
Woopra didn’t go down because of this video. ;-) But it did go down because of traffic in general.
Our Web server has reached it’s useful capacity. We’ve basically moved it up to larger and larger boxes until there is no single box big enough to handle it any more. At this point we’re engineering a load balanced solution which will distribute the traffic among multiple machines. Once that is in place we should basically never experience outages, much less the kinds of rolling unavailability that has been occurring lately.
Sorry about the issues, but it’s part of the growing pains. :-) Hence the reason it’s still in beta.
However, I’ll let you guys in on a little secret that we are expecting to release some major updates within the next week or two. So be on the lookout for a new Release Candidate of the client that will blow your mind!
Cheers,
John
January 15th, 2009 at 12:06 am
I used to work in a similar type of data center, but it was nowhere near the scale of that place. While watching, I could feel the cold air like it was yesterday. And the lights were always my favorite part.
And seeing Woopra was awesome!
January 15th, 2009 at 9:04 am
anytime there was motion in the video, there was a lot of tiling. Little boxes breaking up the smooth video, especially at the end.
January 15th, 2009 at 10:56 am
When will Woopra be ready (the web interface) ?
It says, use the client!
January 15th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Watching: GeekBrief.TV | Video Podcast » Blog Archive » GBTV #495 | Inside the Data Center http://tinyurl.com/aygl4k
January 15th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Cali,
Where do yo get your apple gear (tshirts etc.)??
Love,
Franky
January 15th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
ever wondered what a data centre looks like? http://tinyurl.com/aygl4k
January 16th, 2009 at 12:25 am
Thanks Cali!
I’ve seen those setups but on a much smaller scale. We even have some of that in a couple of very dusty countries for the military.
Typically the inert gas they use is Halon (last time i talked to the fire safety systems guy anyway) and from what i understand, it is heavier than oxygen and displaces it, thus extinguishing.
I was surprised that they weren’t using fiber on their servers(as far as I could tell), but locally i guess it wouldn’t add that much lag as long as the pipes to the net are large enough and the loads are well balanced.
Thanks again for the peek!
January 16th, 2009 at 6:12 am
Thanks. It had been a while since I had to step into a datacenter. Sure is a lot cleaner than my lab. I think it’s interesting how they made sure you didn’t specifically see actual vendor’s logo’s on any of the equipment in the datacenter. I guess it’s safe enough to just see the back of the servers.
One of the coolest things to see is going in with all the lights out, and see all the pretty link lights going off, but I guess it would lose all the effect on camera.
Ron
January 16th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Data Centers are always cool to see, no pun intended.
On a side note, you’re holding your camera in a not so good way, you’ll get better control if you support the lens from the bottom while you hold the camera, otherwise you’re putting all the stress on your right hand
January 17th, 2009 at 9:00 am
It’s always cool when people not familiar with DC’s can see them.
I was recently lucky enough to tour Sun’s green facility in California. It seems that the raised floor is out and in line cooling with hot/cold rows is in. They’ve been able to reduce their power consumption drastically. I think that is where DC’s are heading in the future, and that gets a WOW from me!
Also, check our Sun’s “black box” for a portable DC.
I don’t work for Sun btw, but I am in the hosted solution, or software as a service business (SaaS). I get to spend a lot of time inside of DC’s around the globe.
Thanks for bringing this to the people who don’t normally get inside.
January 17th, 2009 at 10:28 am
I’m an Oracle Pro, ex mainframe. All I have to say is “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” We didn’t have the cages back in the day for the same reason John gave. We had chillers for the water-cooled boxes we had then. Other than that the data center of today’s much the same. I’m 57 and don’t miss old times.
January 17th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Great walk through tour of a data center by @calilewis at GeekBrief TV: http://is.gd/geR9
April 4th, 2009 at 5:58 am
You guys are awesome!
This is like the Coolest thing I’ve ever seen!
Make more videos on the inner workings? I will dig you guys till the end of the earth wooot!