Society‘s reliance on information and technology has come to a tipping point where the most essential elements of our lives hinge on the massive data centers that house, manage and protect data. From telecommunication systems, bt broadband, and managing urban traffic flows to keeping the lights at home, data centers truly have evolved to running the civilized world.
So where are the largest data centers and what are they responsible for? This infographic gives an interesting overview and details how the most recognizable technology brands are using them to best serve us.
3 of the largest data center companies in the world:
Google owns approximately 13 data centers around the globe. In fact, by 2014, the company plans to have three more built to add tot his list. Microsoft estimates that Google has about 900,000+ servers in its data centers across the globe. Microsoft actually leads this table with 100,000 servers! To put the size of the data centers in perspective, Google’s data centers use soemthing like 260 million watts of power that is about 0.01% of the worlds energy (enough to consistently power over 200,000 houses).
Facebook, on the other hand, one of the world’s biggest social networking platforms (1 billion+ users!) actually owns its own server farms. In 2012, Facebook built the Prineville data center at a whopping size of 62,000 square feet. This one data center alone houses 500 cold storage racks that contain about 2TB of data (each using about 2 Kilowatts of power). These servers process approximately 2.4 billion pieces of content and 750TB of data each and every day. Facebook uses a three tiered storage system worth over 100 PB in cpapcity. What’s the biggest space hog? Pictures!
And then there’s Amazon. The sales giant uses about 450,000 servers in its data centers located in 7 locations around the globe. SInce 2008, Amazon has invested close to $86 million on the servers alone. Amazon Web Services uses 40,000 servers for cloud customers, and gets around 17 million visitors each month, accessing approximately 410TB of data. We’re not talking small potatoes!
Mushroom Networks, a privately held company based in San Diego, CA, providing broadband products and solutions for a range of Internet applications.
