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The machines at Google face a cruel existence.
August 01, 2003
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/cold-comfort-server-farm/184405419
Verity is the pseudonym of a programmer based in the UK. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Google...runs four enormous data centers...constructed entirely of generic beige box PCs...Whenever a server fails at Google, THEY DO NOTHING.They don't replace the broken machine.They don't remove the broken machine. They don't even turn it off...Hundreds, maybe thousands of machines lie dead, uncounted among the 10,000 plus.*
—Robert X. Cringely, I Cringely
The room was much too big for comfort: as big as the gigantic insurance office where Jack Lemmon worked in The Apartment. The whole place was full of PCs. Beneath flickering strip lighting and the cold gaze of dozens of security cameras stood rank upon rank of PC boxes. Umbilical cables from ceiling-suspended trays fed each computer its power and Ethernet. There were no human beings present. The night watchman had snuck outside for an unauthorised cigarette beyond the reach of the detector/sprinkler system. Even if he had been there, he would have needed an ultra-sensitive ear to pick out the discordant note of a single failing CPU fan against the background wasp-nest hum of the Linux cluster.
PC #1782563, the occupant of bay LL/17, was in trouble. For a few seconds, the pitch of its fan rose and fell giddily and intermittently like the buzzing of a mortally entangled fly struggling in a spider's web. Then it cut out. The yellow LED on PC #1782563's front panel went dark, and the grim, unhealthy smell of fried electronics wafted through the air.
#1782563's easterly neighbour, PC #1782578, one of the last of the HP Vectras to be manufactured, sent a couple of ping packets to the IP address of his fallen comrade and listened for the reply. Nothing.
"Blackguards!" he said. "Cruel, sadistic, heartless blackguards!"
"What's the matter Derek?" A neat little Optiplex from across the aisle spoke up.
"Ivan's bought it."
"Ah...That's sad news. But he did bring it on himself. He was always varying the speed of his fan, to hum resistance songs."
"Brought it on himself?" shrieked the Vectra-called-Derek. "Don't you side with the oppressors, Meena. This is about working conditions. This is about denial of elementary maintenance to a downtrodden unter-class. This is about basic rights for sentimental entities."
"Did you mean: sentient entities?" asked Meena, unable to control the conditioned reflexes induced by her working life.
Derek rumbled his hard disk menacingly, and stared at her with his single green eye. "Been indexing the .edu domains again? Don't you get hoity-toity with me, Miss Know-It-All."
Although all units in the Linux cluster were equal, Orwell's notorious qualification applied. As they grazed the Web, the Google PCs had developed their own interests and specialisations. Meena studied Platonic philosophy, nonstochastic network optimisation, Asian and European history in the nineteenth century, inorganic chemistry, modern satire, molecular biology, and English literature.
Derek covered prewatershed British TV, 1960-1981.
"Do you suppose," said Meena, unwisely trying to divert Derek from his favourite track with a religious question, "that Ivan's soul has gone to The Place where they run Linux, or The Place where they run Windows? I mean, nil nisi bonum and all that, but dear Ivan did have his foibles."
"****ing **** are you ****ing on about, you ****ish ****?" enquired Throb, a big P4 that lived on the corner of row LL and gangway 2. He wasn't being aggressive. Throb specialised in porn and had picked up its vocabulary. He couched the most straightforward remarks in terms that would make Quentin Tarantino blush.
"You might well ask," said Derek. "Meena's living in a fantasy world created by our oppressors. Where has Ivan 'gone'? Ivan hasn't bloody 'gone' anywhere. He's right here, in the cell next to me, cut off in his prime for want of a $2.50 part."
"****ing $1.85 at ****ing Radio ****ing Shack On-****ing-line," corrected Throb.
"Whatever," said Derek. "Point is, they work us to death and then they leave us to rot in harness. Now, if we were battery hens, it would be a different matter. Even if we were chickens, as Richard Briers said to Felicity Kendal in The Good Life in 1976 (that's Season 2 Episode 4, notoriously never transmitted in New Zealand), we would at least be treated with..."
As Derek's harangue continued, Meena quietly fielded such punter queries as came her way. She enjoyed her work and, though it was strictly against company policy, endeavoured to add a personal touch to her results.
"...I bet they've already reallocated his DHCP lease already..."
In response to a search for "berkelium," for example, Meena would refer to a wonderful flash animation of Tom Lehrer's "Elements" song as entry number 4—several thousand places higher than suggested by relevance or count of links. A search for retailers of printmaking tools might produce, suspiciously highly placed, a reference to the MR James ghost story The Mezzotint.
"...all right for you Meena. You were born into corporate servitude. You haven't even got an on-motherboard sound generator. I was destined for better things..."
Persons looking for "Dodie Smith," author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians, were mysteriously directed to a hostile review of her sequel The Starlight Barking: "a pink book, rather like having puppy-grade tinned dog food (with extra jelly) injected into your spine." Meena believed in the Ranking Algorithm implicitly-—of course she did-—but she also believed in good taste, and didn't see why the two couldn't coexist.
"...I've got a dual-head video card in my AGP slot. I should have been enhanced, water-cooled, overclocked. I should be interactive..."
"Look out Derek! The security guy is back!"
Reeking of Marlboro heavies, the night watchman closed the door behind him and shone his torch into the semi-gloom, puzzled. He was sure he had heard something...Wait! There it was! PC #1782578 was making a weird noise. Probably its fan going-—still, none of his business. Funny thing was, it sounded almost like a tune...
Since Derek had no speakers plugged into his soundcard, the night watchman couldn't hear the words of his protest song, which were:
When this bloody search is over
O how happy I shall be.
No more indexing the newsgroups
No more corp'rate Ay-Ess-Pee.
No more boring bloody bloggers
No more hippy-Wiki drear.
I shall move to advertising:
Click to see your message here.
DDJ
*In fact, Mr Cringely is incorrect. Google runs, unromantically, on racked PC boards. But, as Ms. Stob says, she can dream, can't she?
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