Microsoft Has 1 Million Servers. So What? 172
itwbennett writes "The only thing that's noteworthy about Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's recent disclosure that the company has one million servers in its data centers is that he decided to disclose it — most of the industry giants like to keep that information to themselves, says ITworld's Nancy Gohring. But just for fun, Amazon Web Services engineer James Hamilton did the math: One million servers equals 15–30 data centers, a $4.25 billion capital expense, and power consumption of 2.6TWh annually, or the amount of power that would be used by 230,000 homes in the U.S. Whether this is high or low, good or bad is impossible to know without additional metrics."
How do you calculate space and power... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How much of that information is useful (Score:5, Insightful)
wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)
So does anyone on /. actually contribute to a conversation anymore?
No wonder none of my coworkers come here anymore.
Re:How do you calculate space and power... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How much of that information is useful (Score:5, Insightful)
2.6E12 Wh / 230,000 = 11M Wh per house.
11 Mwh = 11,000 KWh, and that is about 20 cents per, (actually tiered from 10-30c). Or $2200, or about $183 a month, which is a pretty fair estimate, for my bill.
And, yes, a couple of years ago when I retired a (work related) server I no longer needed, my electric bill did go down by about $35/month - which is also in the ball park for "4-ish servers" = a household worth of electricity.
In Soviet Russia in 90-s... (Score:3, Insightful)
... Microsoft rejects YOU!
Seriously, in 90-s in Russia FreeBSD was the system of choice of ISP. Not Linux, not Microsoft. And I have read that once upon a time in 90-s the FreeBSD FTP site took world's first place in total download. The second place was taken by Microsoft site.
Hardware difference was shocking: FreeBSD was a quite old single processor Pentium Pro. It was housed in 5 ATX boxes, 4 of them were filled with SCSI HDD. Microsoft site was a complex of more than 50 computers. So I believe that FreeBSD is more than 50 times more efficient than Microsoft OS, in condition that both OS are serviced by properly educated personnel.
Returning to this article, I believe that 980000 Microsoft servers just waste energy, space and personnel resources. It's enough energy for 225400 US homes.
Re:How much of that information is useful (Score:2, Insightful)
People use Bing. Just not willingly. EX: Windows is Binged. Verizon used to Bing their Android phones. IE is Binged. Siri is Binged. Now Windows 8.1 is Binged too, so it should ZOOM to the top of the charts right?
Bing is a verb that means "forcing an unwanted and inadequate search engine". Binged is the past tense of this word as well as the verb "consumed too many intoxicants".
So Binged may mean to have been forced to consumed too many intoxicants and search for things. It is the frat party of search engines - you use it, but don't know what you did or why you did during the Scavenger Hunt. If you're lucky you don't wake up in the quad in your underpants. This may explain its video search focus on porn. Or maybe the Bing admins just really, really like porn - the most obscure bizarre fetish porn available online apparently, not some mainstream softcore porn.
I'm not a prude: "the Internet is for porn" and the rest of it is en-passant. But the stuff you get from Bing video search is fringe erotica catering to a distinct class of extreme fetish I'm not so enamored with. If that's your thing, fine, but I think I'll let my kids Google with SafeSearch instead.