[electronic music] Sandeep: Hi.
My name is Sandeep, a developer advocate
on the Google Cloud platform. Welcome to the Google
Data Center at the Dalles, Oregon. Take a look around. Before we go inside,
we need to make sure that we have the appropriate
security clearance. Most Google employees can't
even get in here. So let's go on a special
behind-the-scenes tour. [keypad beeps, door opens] I'm here with Noah from the Site Reliability
Engineering Team. Noah, can you tell us
a little bit more about the SRE role at Google? Noah: Yeah, SREs write and
maintain the software systems designed to keep
our services running. Sandeep: So what happens if
one of these systems goes down? Noah: We've designed our systems
from the ground up to be able to handle
any unexpected failures that might occur. We have highly redundant
power, networking, and serving domains so that
even if we do lose an entire cluster, we're able
to re-direct those workloads and live migrate data in
order to minimize any impact. In addition, we have a team
of SREs on call 24/7 that can tackle any problems
that might arise. Sandeep: Thanks, Noah. Now we've learned more
about the systems that manage our fleet
at Google, let's take a deeper look at the data center
infrastructure itself. Before we can
continue further, we need to go through
the biometric iris scan and circle lock. These only allow one person
in at a time and require
dual authentication to continue further. I'll see you
on the other side. [control beeps] computer voice: Please
situate your eyes to begin the procedure. Please come a little closer
to the camera. [beep] Sandeep: Welcome to
the data center floor. As you can tell, we have
a lot of servers, and this is a single cluster
in a single floor in a single building. Managing all of these servers
on a global scale is quite a challenge. To utilize our fleet,
we use tools such as Borg, Colossus,
and Spanner. You may be familiar
with similar tools, such as Kubernetes,
Google Cloud storage, and BigQuery. These tools allow
Google engineers and Cloud customers to more easily manage
infrastructure, allowing everyone to build innovative and scalable
applications. Here at Google, a lot of our
infrastructure is custom-made. This gives us the flexibility
and performance we need to run
all of our services at scale. Oh, hey, it's Virginia,
one of our network engineers. Virginia: Hey, Sandeep. Sandeep: Virginia,
what are you working on today? Virginia: Today I'm working
with Hardware Ops to expand
this data center network to deploy additional machines
in this building. Our fleet is constantly growing
to support new capacity for Google products
and our Cloud customers. Sandeep: That sounds like
a lot of work, to be constantly adding capacity
around the globe. Virginia: Well, we designed
our network so that this kind of capacity
growth isn't very hard. Jupiter, our current data center
and network technology, is a hierarchical design using software-defined
networking principles. So just like with our servers, we abstracted away the specific
details of our network and can manage them like they're
software programs and data. Sandeep: Abstracting seems to be
a common theme here at Google. I've also noticed
there's a lot of fiber running in our data centers.
Virginia: That's right. A single building can
support 75,000 machines, and carry over one petabit
per second of bandwidth, which is actually more than
on the entire Internet. Sandeep: Wow.
Virginia: This allows us to reliably access storage
and compute resources with low latency
and high throughput. Sandeep: So how is
this data center connected to all our other data centers
around the globe? Virginia: Google runs B4, our own private, highly
efficient backbone network, which is actually growing faster than our Internet-facing
network. It connects all
our data centers together and allows services to
efficiently access resources in any location.
Sandeep: Nice. I finally know what all this
Google fiber is really used for. Thanks, Virginia.
Virginia: No problem. Sandeep: So now you've seen all the compute and networking
horsepower required to run your workloads
in the Cloud, let's take a look
at where your data is safely and securely stored. Let's go. Whether you're querying
terabytes of data on BigQuery or storing petabytes
in Google Cloud Storage, all of your data needs to
be stored on a physical device. Our data center infrastructure
allows us to access our storage
quickly and securely. At our scale, we need to handle
hard drive and SSD failure on a daily basis. While your data
is replicated and safe, we need to destroy or recycle
used hard drives so no one can access your data. From the time a disc
is removed from the server to the time it's decommissioned, we maintain a very strict chain
of custody. The discs are completely wiped
and then destroyed in a huge shredder. Let's go shred some hard drives. [beeping] We've looked at
a lot of the hardware that runs in our data centers,
but it doesn't end there. We need to cool and power
our infrastructure in an environmentally
sustainable and reliable way. Let's take a look
at how we cool our servers. Welcome to the mechanical
equipment room. Looks pretty cool,
doesn't it? Oh, hey, it's Brian,
one of our data center
facilities technicians! Brian: Hey, Sandeep.
Sandeep: Hey, Brian. Brian, can you tell us a little
bit more about this room? Brian: Sure.
This is a cooling plant for one of the data centers
that we have on site. So a lot of heat is generated
on the server floor, and it all has to be removed, and that starts right here
in the cooling plant. So it's basically two loops. We have the condenser
water loop and we have
the process water loop. The process water loop are these
blue and red pipes over here. So they take the heat
off the server floor and they transfer it to
these heat exchangers here. The condenser water loop are these green and yellow
pipes here. They take the cold water
from the basin underneath us, they transfer it to
these heat exchangers here, and they send it up to the
cooling towers up on the roof. Sandeep: I notice our pipes
are Google colors. It's pretty cool. So how efficient is
our data center? Brian: Well, Google has
some of the most efficient data centers
in the world. In fact, when we started
reporting our power usage effectiveness or P.U.E., in 2008, most data centers
were around 100% overhead. At that point in time,
Google was 20% overhead, but since then,
we've reduced it to just 12%, and that even includes
our cafeterias. Sandeep: Whoa!
That is so low! Also what's this big
green machine for? Brian: Oh, well,
this is a chiller. We very rarely use them, but it helps keep the process
water temperature in the desired temperature range when it gets really hot outside, basically helping
the cooling tower do its job, and some of
our newer data centers, they have no chillers at all. Sandeep: I love how our new data
centers are even more efficient. By the way, can we go up and
take a look at a cooling tower? Brian: Sure.
Let's go. Sandeep: Wow,
what a view up here! Brian: So, Sandeep,
this is a cooling tower. It uses evaporation
to rapidly cool the water from the condenser loop and
sends it back down to the basin. You could say we're making
actual clouds with the Cloud. Sandeep: Clouds making actual
clouds--welcome to Google! So, Brian, how do
we power the Cloud? Brian: Well, that all starts at
Google's power substation. Let's go take a look. So this is the Google-owned
power substation. This is where the high voltage
power enters the site. It's reduced and then sent to multiple power
distribution centers such as this one right here. Sandeep: What happens if
a power distribution center loses power? Brian: If it loses power,
we have multiple generator
and utility backup sources available to maintain power
to those servers. Sandeep: And where does
all the power come from? Brian: It actually comes from multiple hydroelectric
power plants that are nearby.
Sandeep: I love how Google uses reliable green energy
whenever possible. Brian: We are
100% carbon neutral actually. Sandeep: That's pretty cool You know, it seems like
Google builds reliability from the ground up,
from the power and cooling all the way to the software
systems that manage our fleet. Thanks for showing me around,
Brian. Brian: No problem.
Have a great day. Sandeep: Thank you
for joining me on this special
behind-the-scenes tour. Please check out
cloud.google.com to learn how you can build
what's next.
