Google File System

I admit it. I'm facinated by all things Google. How the heck do they do what they do? Well, here's a look at their basic infrastructure - the Google File System (GFS)- that shows how at least some of the magic is performed. The article even reveals their real secret: They're smarter than you.

StorageMojo » Google File System Eval: Part I: "GFS is one of the key technologies that enables the most powerful general purpose cluster in history. While most IT folks lose sleep over keeping the Exchange server backed up for a couple of thousand users, Google’s infrastructure both supports massive user populations and the regular roll out of compute and data intensive applications that would leave most IT ops folks gibbering in fear. How do they do it?

Partly they are smarter than you. Google employs hundreds of CompSci PhDs as well as many more hundreds of really smart people. Partly it is their history: impoverished PhD candidates can’t afford fancy hardware to build their toys, so they started cheap and got cheaper. And finally, being really smart and really poor, they rethought the whole IT infrastructure paradigm.

Note to CIOs: it isn’t going to take your users long to notice that Google can do this stuff and you can’t. Your life isn’t going to get any easier.