Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

How many servers does it take to power Google’s (News - Alert) data center network? The world may never know.

According to a recent Data Center Knowledge report, Google watchers have perhaps been overestimating the number of servers in the company’s data center network as estimates relay that Google has more than one million servers. New data on Google’s energy use counters that number, however, suggests that they are probably running on 900,000. The new figure is based on information Google shared with Stanford professor Jonathan Koomey, who has just released an updated report on data center energy usage.

According to reports, Google’s David Jacobowitz, a program manager on the Green Energy team, told Koomey that the electricity used by the company’s data centers was less than one percent of 198.8 billion kWh – the estimated total global data center energy usage for 2010. That means that Google may be running its entire global data center network in an energy footprint of roughly 220 megawatts of power.

“Google’s data center electricity use is about 0.01% of total worldwide electricity use and less than 1 percent of global data center electricity use in 2010,” Koomey writes, while noting that his numbers represent estimates. “This result is in part a function of the higher infrastructure efficiency of Google’s facilities compared to in-house data centers, which is consistent with efficiencies of other cloud computing installations, but it also reflects lower electricity use per server for Google’s highly optimized servers.”

One thing is certain, however: whether Google has 900,000 or one million servers, the empire is playing it smart by equipping these servers with leading power protection technologies so as not to suffer from catastrophic downtime.

For example, at the server level, Google’s custom servers feature a power supply that integrates a battery, allowing it to function as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), according to the article. The design shifts the UPS and battery backup functions from the data center into the server cabinet.

Power protection is of the utmost importance for the largest of companies like Google down to the smaller SMBs, especially in the wake of increased downtime. According to leading power protection company Minuteman UPS/Para Systems (News - Alert), downtime is spreading rampant in the tech space.

“As shown in a recent story on CNN, our demand on the aging power grid is greater than ever,” Duston Nixon, marketing communications specialist for Minuteman UPS/Para Systems, told TMCnet. “Factors like unseasonably warm temperatures and the ever increasing number of electronic devices each of us own mean our current system is stretched to its limits.”

According to the CNN report, experts on the nation's electricity system have highlighted a worrisome fact that there has been a “steep increase” in non-disaster-related outages affecting at least 50,000 consumers. In fact, during the past two decades, blackouts have increased 124 percent – up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.