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Hardware

Google's Early Hardware 223

Posted by CmdrTaco from the back-in-the-day dept.
revjonnylove writes "Ever wonder what Google's early hardware looked like? Well, wonder no more. Thanks to Archive.org's Way Back Machine, we can all bask in the glory of Google's home made HDD cases, constructed partially of Lego, as well as other neat-o toys. Is that a PowerPC logo I see on one of their servers?"
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Google's Early Hardware More

Google's Early Hardware

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  • Not bad! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CptChipJew ( 301983 ) <michaelmiller@gmail . c om> on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:35AM (#8755446) Journal
    There are 9 9Gdrives between the two machines...The left box has 3 9G drives, and there are 6 4G drives on the right...This IBMdisk expansion box has another 8 9G drives...This is our homemade disk box which contains 10 9G SCSI drives

    294 GB? That's a pretty damn nice mostly donated setup for 1997. This was '97 right?

  • Gmail (Score:5, Funny)

    by gid13 ( 620803 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:37AM (#8755452)
    1GB per person. Servers made of Lego. No April Fools.

  • Its amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sailor420 ( 515914 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:37AM (#8755454) Homepage
    Its amazing to think that search engine used to run on just that.

    Id be interested to see what their current hardware is like.

  • It give us hope (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thammoud ( 193905 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:38AM (#8755456)
    us pee ons that we can still create something very special with almost nothing but scrapped together hardware. Who said that we need millions to implement great ideas ?

    • Re:It give us hope (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Achoi77 ( 669484 )
      A lot of those boxes seemed to be donated by IBM. Hrm, I wonder what they did to get so many 'donations,' and where can I get some of these so called 'donated boxes by IBM.' =)

      Seriously, did they go up to IBM and pitch their vision or something?

      • Re:It give us hope (Score:5, Insightful)

        by black mariah ( 654971 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:51AM (#8755510)
        They were at college. They probably called up the guy at IBM that handles giving shit out and said "Hey, IBM Giving Shit Out Dude, give some shit to us." Or something to that effect. If you're doing some kind of research I'm sure IBM and most other companies would be willing to cut you a deal or donate hardware to your project.

        • Re:It give us hope (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:55AM (#8755532)
          They probably have an entire "Giving Shit Out" department.

          • Re:It give us hope (Score:3, Interesting)

            by dattaway ( 3088 )
            In the electronics industry, its called "engineering samples." Have an idea? Call their sales department and ask for samples to prototype your idea. Much like a test drive of a new car, except you get to keep the car and they come over to help you modify the hell out of it.

    • Re:It give us hope (Score:5, Funny)

      by PacoTaco ( 577292 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:48AM (#8755502)
      us pee ons

      How often does this happen to you?

    • Peon [reference.com] is actually the word I think you were looking for... while the phrase "pee on" would probably accurately reflect the way that some workers are treated, it summons to mind some things that many of us would rather not think about.
    • Who said that we need millions to implement great ideas ?

      The military.

  • Amazing! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:39AM (#8755460)
    With a hard drive case made of LEGOs and under a dozen computers google managed to become the world's most powerful search tool.

  • PPC (Score:3, Informative)

    by boarder8925 ( 714555 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:40AM (#8755467)
    Is that a PowerPC logo I see on one of their servers?
    Looks that way [archive.org].

    • Re:PPC (Score:5, Informative)

      by Spacelord ( 27899 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:46AM (#8755496)
      Yes it is an IBM RS/6000 F50 which does indeed have a powerpc processor, and usually runs IBM's own version of Unix, namely AIX. I've configured plenty of those back in 98/99.

      I do wonder what OS runs (or used to run) on that machine though, AIX or (Yellowdog?) Linux?

    • Re:PPC (Score:3, Funny)

      by rixstep ( 611236 )
      No, that's 'Powe rPC', a form of IPC (interprocess communication) invented by Franklin Douglas Powe.

      He also invented the 'r4' SMP cluster environment.

  • I remember those 9Gig drives when new (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shoppa ( 464619 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:40AM (#8755468)
    I remember when those 9 Gig drives were new. Street price was $4000 or $5000 each.

    Last time I checked, those same model drives were listing for $5 on E-bay but not selling... it'd cost way more to ship them.

    • $4000? In 1997?

      You're on crack.

      Though I hasten to admit that I didn't buy any 9 gig SCSI drives in 1997, per se, I did buy two 9-gigabyte IBM 9ES ultrawides in 1998 for something less than $500 each (Non-anecdotal evidence here [sharkyextreme.com]).

      (Oh, and yes. They're still working justfine, thanks.)

  • Where are these hardwares today? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:41AM (#8755469) Homepage Journal
    Are they in a museum or Google's vault? ;)

  • standard (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Cheeze ( 12756 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:42AM (#8755475) Homepage
    I think those types of setups are familiar to just about anyone that was in the computer arena in the early to mid-nineties. Having random machine without cases, 10 keyboards that may or may not be plugged in, and horrible wiring is probably how many of the top technological companies started. I am sure now it's all properly racked up with labeled cables and a KVM switch, but before the funding, I bet most companies run on old workstations. I thought the lego disk array was appropriate. I wonder what a fire marshal would have to say about their setup.

    I think the worst setup I have seen was a previous company I worked for. They had a satellite office that just contained hardware. Well, no one ever went there, and for good reason. It housed quite a bit of old dialup gear, analog dialup gear, complete with external serial 28.8 modems. they were just stacked up all over the place. good thing they thought ahead and got modems with volume knobs, or you would be able to hear each person dialing in. The plastic racks all of the gear was sitting on was so old, it had started cracking and was a hazard to be around. It all worked somehow though. ahh...the good old days.
    • You know you're a computer nut when: 1) your bedroom has more computers in it than Google's early setup, and is much less organized. I have 15 in here now. 12x10' room. I pity the power wiring in here. One Pentium II is running in a case built entirely of STANDARD lego (not duplo). Deja vu all over again. Incedentally, I use DistCC, and can muster the CPU power equivalent to an 8GHz P4...

  • Google hardware (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TrentL ( 761772 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:43AM (#8755478) Homepage
    Oh. I thought you were going to talk about this [google.com].
    • Their software must suck, if you need 8 servers to index 40 GB worth of data.
      • I was shocked to see that their lowest end search server is limited to a maximum of 20 GB. And it sounds like their highest end server maxes out at 200 GB. Either they haven't updated their web pages in ages or they only serve companies with tiny intranets or small libraries of content. Imagine if one GMail server could only handle 20 users (I know, nobody's to use all 1 gig)...that'd be enough servers to cause another california blackout.
        • I seriously doubt that it's harddrive space limiting the capacity of their server offerings. I don't know the details of how Google's search algorithms work, but I can tell you that they don't run in constant time, and that the requirements probably ramp up pretty quickly as you add data. Remember that Pagerank works on the connections between nodes in a network, which means with each node added to the network there may be many connections to analyze.

          Also, 20GB of space is a lot in many applications, and

  • Any recent photos? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by lyberth ( 319170 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:44AM (#8755484) Homepage
    How does it look today?
    how do they manage the wirering to all those servers today?

  • I love Google (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:44AM (#8755489)
    I love Google and want to have like a million of its babies. I want to print out Google's front page and rub it against my naked body. Actually, I've done it once already, got some nasty paper cuts. But it was worth it.

    I LOVE GOOGLE

  • In the Early Days (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You can find tons of info and reading by googling 'site:stanford.edu backrub' should yeild some of the first papers and some great pictures.

  • Orignal "About Google" Page (Score:5, Informative)

    by hot_Karls_bad_cavern ( 759797 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:52AM (#8755514) Journal
    Here. [archive.org]

  • storage, then and now (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dankelley ( 573611 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:54AM (#8755522)
    Less than a decade later, this sort of storage sits in an ipod. A decade before, we stored 'big' datasets on 20Meg disks.

    It's amazing, how hardware changes.

    But human-scale things remain the same. It still takes the same time to write a /. comment, or to sigh.

    • I remember buying a 20 MB hard drive 17 years ago for my Mac Plus. At work we were using 200 MB SMD drives on our low end Unix systems, and arrays of similar 200 MB disks (probaby CDC then) on the Crays. A decade ago at work we were using 500MB disks on our low end Suns, if my failing memory serves me correctly.

  • I thought they used a bunch of pidgeons? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mudcathi ( 584851 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:55AM (#8755527) Journal
    Fowl hardware: pidgeons [google.com]

  • The first two are Dell Poweredge 4200's (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mercury2k ( 133466 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:56AM (#8755536)
    For those who are wondering, I happen to own two of the very same machines in the top two pictures lol! They are Dell Poweredge 4200 machines with the logo plates removed! The specs are roughly this:

    Dual CPU capable (max 333mhz)
    Max RAM 512MB Bios Limit (66mhz EDO SDRAM)
    6x80pin SCA drive bays
    Dual 700 watt hot swap power supplies
    Built in VGA (ATI Mach64 VT 1MB)

    For the record, they typically ship with AMI Megaraid 428 (or higher) hardware raid cards. But the onboard SCSI2 is Adaptec AIC-7860 & 7880. Also worth mentioning, they are clusterable using Windows NT. I grabbed these machines off machine and local computer store and have been very stable work horses running Debian! (www.emaildesktop.com).
    Just glad to see that these machines were useful in their days!

  • More pictures... (Score:5, Informative)

    by midimonkey ( 671210 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:57AM (#8755540)
    In case you're having a hard time loading the images from the story, you can find some other images here [stanford.edu].

  • How many servers now? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @10:59AM (#8755553)
    Last I heard Google has a serverfarm of 8000 machines but how many do they have today?

    Just to lighten up a little, check out a little story by Verity Stob [ddj.com] on Life in the Google Farm [ddj.com].

  • video of a lecture about google (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:07AM (#8755571)
    If you have broadband and a spare hour, have a look at this lecture [uwtv.org] about google by Urs Holzle. Its reasonably light on hard-core specifics, but he covers some interesting things like determining the relevance of a page, hosting problems due to very high power density, failure rates of hardware etc etc.

    Interesting stuff.

  • Imagine (Score:3, Funny)

    by iLEZ ( 594245 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:12AM (#8755592) Homepage
    Imagine a Beowulf cluster of.. nah..

  • let's get some info on the current setup (Score:5, Interesting)

    by iwein ( 561027 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:13AM (#8755598)

    getting some info of google's current hardware in here seems a good idea. here goes.

    here [rankforsales.com] is a nice article. The company estimates that a server running Google applications all day is the equivalent of 40 years of use in a regular context. Approximately 82 of these servers die every day, but not completely; Google employs maintenance people who walk around with carts of hard disks, for example, and replace them in malfunctioning servers or UPSes.

    now for some pics... damn. can't find them with google :). i'll post them if i have them.

  • The Brits on the board will be with me when I say (Score:5, Funny)

    by IainMH ( 176964 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:15AM (#8755608)
    if only the Glastonbury ticket service was on such a powerful set up.

    Dual Pentium IIs?

    Luxury.
  • Gmail's servers also have powerpc logos [macslash.org] on them..

    (It's probably a april fools joke from macslash, though..)

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:40AM (#8755750)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Those white servers in the first pic are Dell PowerEdge 4100s if I'm not mistaken. Funny how the square Dell logo was removed and it says they were donated by Intel.

  • Legos? Duplos! (Score:5, Informative)

    by stick_figure_of_doom ( 729073 ) <rnk-slashdot@k l e c k n e r . net> on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:43AM (#8755772) Homepage
    Those are not legos! I remember those things from way back when, they're Duplos. They're way bigger than Legos, and they don't cut your foot when you step on them. They're designed so that little kids can't hurt themselves. I never thought I'd see those again.

  • I am an idiot! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by John Harrison ( 223649 ) <johnharrison@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Saturday April 03, 2004 @11:49AM (#8755806) Homepage Journal
    There was a database class offered at Stanford that was advertised as being about "things you could do with our db of 1/3rd of the internet's text, including links."

    This sounded interesting, but I hated the prof so I didn't take it. This class turned out to be related to the Google project of course and many of the people who took it ended up at the company.

    My other brush with Google greatness was being designated driver for Larry (friend of a friend). This was before anyone knew about Google.

  • Duplo blocks, not Legos (Score:3, Informative)

    by puetzc ( 131221 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:12PM (#8755934)
    Unless those are the worlds smallest servers, I think those look like Duplo blocks, not Legos. I have boxes of both. Duplos are simpler, and about twice the size - although Duplos and Legos can be mixed. The thick Duplo baseplates make a much better case cover, as they would be stiffer than Legos. I especially like the operators' faces as a part of the case.
  • Yeah, um, I'm starting a search engine too. Send me lots of kick-ass hardware for free.

  • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • And I wasted money on racks... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Saturday April 03, 2004 @12:47PM (#8756143) Journal
    ...when the answer was FLOOR MOUNTED servers the whole time! Next thing you know, we'll find out you can skip the expensive UPS and plug things straight into the wall...nah, that's crazy!
  • Nice Speedos [archive.org]
    And people want to buy this guy's stock? [archive.org]
    And you can get the whole shebang here: Sergey Brin's Stanford Homepage [archive.org]
  • The "lego machine" is in the basement corridor of the William Gates Computer Science Building (really!) at Stanford. The basement corridor seems to have the less-interesting historic hardware. There's also a large glass case of old networking hardware ("Wow! A DELNI!"), all unlabeled.

  • More pictures of "The Original GOOGLE Computer Storage" from Stanford CS Department's Computer History Exhibits Photo Tour. [stanford.edu]

    You can physically see this display in the basement of the Stanford Gates Building.

  • Here's part of a poem mentioning written by Sergey Brin's father Michael Brin (he's a mathematician at U Maryland) on the occasion of his son's 25th birthday:

    ...
    You are tough, you mine data,
    You surf first and think later,
    And your crawler fast as light
    Wanders madly in the night.
    ...

    Surf first, think later, huh? Not sure I can agree with that... ;-)

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