Microsoft--license to deal

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Google is just a large Linux cluster of PC's.

From: http://www.internetweek.com/infrastructure01/infra050701.htm

Google Keeps Pace With Demand

Maintains speed, doubles server farm infrastructure to 8,000 systems

May 7, 2001

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Google's servers run Red Hat Linux, proving by example that the open-source OS can be used to run a big business.
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From: http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/economics-google-hardware-infrastructure/view

The Economics of Google's Hardware Infrastructure
2004-10-14 19:26:14

Because Google servers are custom made, we?ll use pricing information for comparable PC-based server racks for illustration. For example, in late 2002 a rack of 88 dual-CPU 2-GHz Intel Xeon servers with 2 Gbytes of RAM and an 80-Gbyte hard disk was offered on RackSaver.com for around $278,000. This figure translates into a monthly capital cost of $7,700 per rack over three years.

The cost advantages of using inexpensive, PC-based clusters over high-end multiprocessor servers can be quite substantial, at least for a highly parallelizable application like ours. The example $278,000 rack contains 176 2-GHz Xeon CPUs, 176 Gbytes of RAM, and 7 Tbytes of disk space. In comparison, a typical x86-based server contains eight 2-GHz Xeon CPUs, 64 Gbytes of RAM, and 8 Tbytes of disk space; it costs about $758,000.2 In other words, the multiprocessor server is about three times more expensive but has 22 times fewer CPUs, three times less RAM, and slightly more disk space. Much of the cost difference derives from the much higher interconnect bandwidth and reliability of a high-end server, but again, Google?s highly redundant architecture does not rely on either of these attributes.

....It's well known that google puts together their own hardware, what struck me is that until you've seen it presented in naked numeric terms, you don't fully grasp the significance of the strategy. Commodity hardware inside the datacenter is going to be an extremely powerful trend, this is in fact being driven by commodity software (i.e. open source). See, if software is priced per CPU or server, the percentage of the software cost becomes prohibitively large. A few months ago I put together a decently equipped machine for around 300 dollars, now if you include say a Microsoft OS that costs say over 100 dollars then software will be at least one fourth of the overall cost. Multiply that with thousands of servers and you can see how big an obstacle it is.....

FYI, that it is or may be open source does not mean that they are making it public! Too many people get confused on the meanings of terms, especially where licences are concerned! There are 50+ Open Source Licenses (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/) with different terms and conditions.

Posted by: B.O.F.H.   Posted on: 11/08/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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