夜市必吃美食

網搜龍頭Google十七日透過虛擬方式，帶領使用者走訪公司設在歐美的八個龐大資料中心。Google讓外界一窺資料中心內部真麵目，還是破天荒第一遭。Google在名為「網路居住所在地」（Where the Internet Lives）的網頁上，張貼了八個資料中心內外觀的一係列「街景」影片與照片。

　　英國每日郵報報導，從愛阿華州的大型倉庫到改裝的芬蘭造紙廠，Google伺服器群的所在地雖有不同，但多是龐大建築；有的伺服器樓層大到必須提供自行車給工程師代步。

　　北卡羅來納州的Google伺服器群設施，是Google「街景」（Street View）服務的中心，虛擬導覽顯示，伺服器群是由穿着如突擊隊員的安全人員戒護。

　　八個資料中心分別位於美國南卡羅來納州柏克萊郡、愛阿華州康瑟爾布拉夫斯市、喬治亞州道格拉斯郡、奧克拉荷馬州梅斯郡、北卡羅來納州雷諾市、俄勒岡州達勒市、芬蘭哈米納市、比利時聖吉蘭市。

　　正在興建的Google資料中心分別位於台灣、香港、新加坡以及智利基利庫拉市。

　　由於太多人對資料中心感到好奇，Google決定提供虛擬瀏覽。頂尖科技公司的資料中心一向是公司全力保護的機密。Google表示，公司職員也僅有少數可進入伺服器的樓層。

　　Google資料中心高級負責人卡瓦說：「我們真的收到記者、科學人員等的參觀要求，沒有數百人，也有數十人。考慮到使用者的安全與隱私，我們無法讓大眾進入，但希望把中心內部公布給眾人看。」

　　照片與影片顯示，負責處理網路搜尋、顯示YouTube影片、處理電子郵件的電腦多如一座迷宮，另有數張照片顯示數量可觀的伺服器與色彩繽紛的電纜。公司未來將再提供更多照片。

　　Google指出，這是他們首次讓使用者參觀資料中心內部，網頁張貼的照片是由周康妮（Connie Zhou）拍攝，進入網頁「可一窺前所未見的科技、公司人員、維持公司運作的場所」。

The online gallery reveal the interior of eight of Google's secretive server farms around the globe, from Finland to Iowa



One of Google's server farms in Council Bluffs, Iowa, which provides over 115,000 square feet of space for servers running services like Search and YouTube





Google colour codes its servers depending on their location, while piping in the buildings is coded depending on what it carries -with cool water in blue tubes and warm in red



Google's Douglas County data centre in Georgia is so large the firm provides Google branded bicycles for staff to get around on



A street view tour published by Google also reveals a hidden surprise - A Stormtrooper standing guard over a server in Google's North Carolina server farm



Here hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated in Oklahoma. The green lights are the server status LEDs reflecting from the front of the servers



The Iowa campus network room, where routers and switches allow data centers to talk to each other. The fiber cables run along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling.



Even the water pipes reflect Google's brand: These colorful pipes are responsible for carrying water in and out of an Oregon data center. The blue pipes supply cold water and the red pipes return the warm water back to be cooled.



In Hamina, Finland, Google chose to renovate an old paper mill to take advantage of the building's infrastructure as well as its proximity to the Gulf of Finland's cooling waters.



Google's server farm in Douglas County, Iowa



The exterior of a Dulles, Oregon server farm



Denise Harwood, a Google Engineer, diagnoses an overheated CPU. For more than a decade, Google has built some of the world's most efficient servers.



A Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa.



Each server rack has four switches, connected by a different coloured cable. Colours are kept the same throughout data centres so staff know which one to replace in case of failure