Google released some pictures of inside their datacenters. We found two things interesting from this:
- They’re using tapes for backup. A lot of them: large robotic libraries with what appears to be LTO tapes. Our LTO autoloader is only 8-slots. They work the same though, but you can walk inside of theirs.
- Fire suppression is “highly-pressurized water” that’s been cleaned and treated in case it ever has to be used. In the past some datacenters started trending towards alternative forms of fire suppression such as CO2 or clean agents like Novec, FM200, Sapphire, etc. However, this trend is reversing with many modern datacenters favoring traditional fire sprinklers. Interlocking systems all but eliminate accidents, and unlike in the movies real world glass bulb sprinkler heads trigger individually. If we had to guess it’s because the cost to benefit – including maintenance – wasn’t worth it. Clean agent systems to cover the large spaces as shown are extremely expensive.
Check out the pictures at google.com/about/datacenters/gallery/ if you haven’t seen them yet.
UPDATE: it turns out at least one of these pictures was faked for whatever reason; others are possibly not as accurate as they claim to be.