A Look Inside A Google Data Center

With so much of our information now being contained in the cloud, we’ll soon be getting to the point where local storage won’t be as necessary as it once was. That said, the “cloud” seems so faceless, and few of us have any idea of what it really is. To give you a look inside the cloud, here’s a great video tour of a Google data center in South Carolina.

There are a number of things to take note of when watching. For one, Google’s security is pretty intense, including alligators (yep, don’t try to bypass the roads via the swamp), lasers, and biometric scanning. The other things are power, with it’s own electric substation, and cooling, via recycled water. Oh, and the temperature in the data center is 80 degrees, which is warmer than most standard computer environments.

I especially liked the part about what they do with obsolete hard drives.

This is a video worth checking out. You’ll definitely have a different view of the cloud afterwards.