Despite the lack of hack, this post was very informative and answered a few questions I had about their systems in a bit greater detail.
Thanks for that!

Posted at 12:05 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by Louis II

Uhm.. iT was an april fools’ day prank… and today is April 11!

Posted at 12:39 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by LSK

Welcome to….a month ago. Seriously?

Posted at 12:43 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by B

what blows me away is how much these server racks resemble the original google servers as on display at the computer history museum. they are more professional obviously, with a custom board and battery backup. they also make mention of thermodynamic design for air inlet and outlet and they’re using professional building materials (i.e. steel instead of pegboard and zip ties). that being said, these are pretty much the same thing…i love that.

Posted at 1:47 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by albert

I don’t think the story is fake. It was published on April 1st, but not everything is a prank on April 1st.

Most prank articles get updated a day later to say they were a prank. This one got updated a day later to correct facts…

Posted at 2:16 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by BikeHelmet

Hmmm …
NOT a server motherboard .. looks more like a gaming PC
No management port, no server mgt controller chipset, no thermal fuse on batteries, no memory redundancy, only one LAN port, a serial port? HUH?

Definately an April Fool – Good one tho’ LOL

Posted at 3:15 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by Rob

Wow, I had to comment on the Cnet site because the comments were full of crap like: “hard drive not connected, unless it connects to the motherboard[/sarcasm]”

Freaking idiots.

I would term this as a hack, it is made from standard parts turned to a different use. It has an ATX looking PSU that makes 13+ volts only, and uses a small battery as the backup. Also it only runs on 220v -240v, thus making it more power efficient.

Plus anything with Velcro as a design element holding in the Hard drives, PSU and UPS battery qualifies as a hack in my book.

Now if only they could sell these with a 5-10% margin to us home-based hackers :), (or better yet, refurbished for next to nothing)

I think the industry should move to 12v input only motherboards. As the Cnet article mentions it is only $2 more for the motherboard components, and then PSU’s can drop dramatically in price.

I guess we would need to have drives that don’t use 5volts, but that should be simple.

I like the battery, it may be possible to use one as the buffer to the power delivery, thus negating the need for expensive filtering.

It certiantly feels ‘hacky’ enough to be a hack to me.

Posted at 5:03 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by nubie

Rob-
They don’t include those things since it would raise the cost of the board.

Posted at 5:57 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by bor

@Rob: i guess you did not read the article. google has always said that their servers are unique due to their use of lots of simple low powered hardware. it was estimated in 2006 that they had over 450,000 servers. the redundancy is in the number of machines themselves.

Posted at 5:58 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by John Berube

this was an april fools joke… 10 days ago…

Posted at 6:00 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by Jeff

I dont think it was an April Fools, as it was published in German website on April second:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Blick-hinter-die-Kulissen-von-Google–/meldung/135679

And if I got it right updated on th the original source on April second also:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html

So i think it is somewhat trust worthy, though you guys were late ;)

Just kiddin!
Love your work! Keep it up!

Posted at 7:52 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by JavaJens

I think its real, it looks like a cheap to make system which is easily removed and installed if there was something wrong with it.

The hdds are held in by velcro for quick change over. the board doesent have anything on there that it doesent need.

Looks to me like a system designed to be cheap and easy to fix. A company that has almost half a million servers would want something like that.

Posted at 8:25 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by blackman

“You can see the quake test after the break.” well my machine can pull hundreds of fps in quake… OOOOOH that kinda quake!

Posted at 8:45 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by ProGamingLife

Quake…. so silly

Posted at 11:26 pm on Apr 11th, 2009 by tripointlogic

definitely a april fools joke… if nothing else, if that was an actual server they would at least put the battery to the back to make alot smaller. And also, i see no LAN port -_-. oh and if they needed a quick change of hdd they wouldn’t use a design where you first have to remove whole server slice out of rack to change it.

Posted at 4:48 am on Apr 12th, 2009 by jelengar

What is funny or unbelievable about it that would make this a suitable April fools joke ? Building cheap efficient servers is a necessity when you need 450000 of them !

Posted at 6:20 am on Apr 12th, 2009 by vic

@jelengar
The lan port is above the usb ports.

Posted at 7:18 am on Apr 12th, 2009 by barry99705

The picture is looks to me to be from the top of a design that is oriented flat, rack-style
And as for parts, you can only see half the mobo, and we know from the miniservers google sells and anandtech tested (http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2523&p=3) that those use gigabyte boards.
As for rob’s post: looks like a gaming PC? Really? Are you drunk? It might be fake but gaming PC..

Posted at 10:22 am on Apr 12th, 2009 by Wwhat

Haha, if it is an april fools joke then check out the black and white picture of dozens of them in racks.

How are they going to fake that?

It is supposed to be a frame cap from a video, so if you could see the video it would be conclusive.

The hardware photos and specs are enough for me though.

Posted at 12:20 pm on Apr 12th, 2009 by nubie

Back in early 90’s Olivetti had 486 servers with built-in 12V battery. Battery was connected to power supply and functioned as UPS. Olivetti PSU had all normal voltages so it was bit different than this Google variant, but exactly same idea. I saved two of those Olivetti power supplied years ago because they were special, but sadly have lost them since.

Posted at 2:17 pm on Apr 12th, 2009 by ikk

yeah what’s so funny or prankish about cleverly designed servers that google would need to run as effeciently as it does? i originally thought it was a prank on apr 1st until i looked at it more and realized there was nothing funny about it.

Posted at 10:53 pm on Apr 12th, 2009 by will d.

People who think this was a prank are severely misguided.

Before google released the photos, it was commonly known that google:

- prefers simple, cheap, commodity hardware
- uses velcro instead of screws
- was doing serious research into 12V systems with embedded battery backup. (iirc there were also hints that they were using this config in production)
- doesn’t replace servers as they fail. its a periodic task where workers pull the failed servers in a center en masse, repair them, and put them back into service
- uses RAM for active datastores, with HD being merely a backup

The pics are /perfectly/ consistent with what was already known.

I can’t wait until pics come out of Google’s 10Gbit custom switches — I bet they look a lot alike…

Posted at 12:54 pm on Apr 13th, 2009 by Nick

Maybe someone should grammar-check the articles before they’re posted, too.

Posted at 1:14 pm on Apr 14th, 2009 by Laminar

What cracks me up is the comments in this thread purporting that any of the authors know an iota about server design.

Posted at 1:30 pm on Apr 15th, 2009 by anonymous

Excuse me!
It’s not a prank. If anything it reflects upon Google’s talents for doing the impossible. According to one Google Engineer I know rather well, all of their hardware is built from off the shelf parts, and is further customized.

But when it exhibits a solid failure, it gets yanked and a new one gets installed.

And that Olivetti 486 job you’re discussing was one of many they built for AT&T at that time AT&T owned them. They ran the ESS or switches that ran the exchanges, they were part of the 3B series of designs.

Posted at 10:06 pm on Apr 17th, 2009 by GCL

A couple years ago, you could purchase gigabyte Mainboards (8IPXDREL-GG) on ebay (also some geek website) – very minimal; 2x 2.4 xeons, 6x Memory slots (PC-2100), IDE, 2x USB, 1x PCI, onboard video and serial.
These were being solds in the hundreds quantity – I do wonder if it’s possible they decided to sell a heap of ‘old stock’.
These systems wouldnt need much – since all they’re doing is sitting there and collecting data, and listening to instructions from the ‘main’ server. Highly feasible, and cost effective.

Posted at 5:46 pm on Apr 19th, 2009 by Sparky

–almost, but that’s not all they use

Posted at 5:43 pm on Apr 20th, 2009 by abehman

@abehman
At which one of us are you addressing? Mine or Sparky?

Of the two mine goes into detail. His goes in depth.

Posted at 6:04 pm on Apr 20th, 2009 by GCL

It’s not seems to be ….. :)

Posted at 6:10 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by TechTips

wow..srsly..its a 360 MB with the case ripped away….extra storage added…

Posted at 6:06 pm on Sep 24th, 2009 by Unknitcorpse