Server farm
A server farm is a group of similar, networked servers - hosts , which are connected to a logical system (also: data center ). It optimizes the internal processes by distributing the workload between the individual servers and accelerates the computer processes by utilizing the computing power of several servers. A server farm uses appropriate software to distribute the load .
The advantage of server farms lies in the central administration and the horizontal scalability, which enable a quick and easy adaptation to growth and changed customer requirements by adding more hosts. By redundant design of infrastructure such. B. double cabling, redundant energy supply and network connection, a high level of reliability is achieved.
Server farms improve the use of IT resources and increase the availability , performance and security of applications. The parallel server structures with appliance servers offer extremely high data throughput and enable simultaneous access by many users.
It is estimated that Google operates around 1 million of the world's 33 million computer servers. The rooms for the required cooling systems (water cooling, air conditioning, air blowers) are now larger than the corresponding computer rooms. In addition, many servers are operated in parallel for security reasons ( redundancy ), which leads to an average utilization of only around 20% so far. Controls and components are optimized to improve energy efficiency. In addition, server farms are now also more favorable in climate, cooler there, built areas, to reduce the cost of cooling: In June 2013 opened Facebook its first European server farm in Sweden Luleå . ( See also: Green IT )
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jon Brodkin: Facebook opens data center filled entirely with servers it designed. In: ars technica. June 12, 2013, accessed on October 5, 2013 (English): "Facebook today opened a new data center in Luleå, Sweden, making it the company's first in Europe and the first to use only servers designed by Facebook itself."