The internet provides us with a treasure trove of information that we otherwise couldn’t do without. Yet, how does all this information processing work? Youtube channel Google Cloud Tech provides a quick and informative video on how their data center services operate.
Whenever you do a Google search, ask your Google Home a question, or send a request, that data gets sent in “packets” all over the global fiber network.
Many of these packets end up at data centers for further processing.
A data center is comprised of powerful computers, or “server racks,” that store, manage, and break down important data. Most businesses that start out need to pay for all the cooling, maintenance, and management of these server racks. To reduce costs, companies can source their data centers to a cloud service provider, with Google Cloud being an example. Such cloud service providers are made up of tens of thousands of servers that provide services to billions of people per day. Such companies also specialize in “multi-tenancy,” or the ability to share information with multiple people instead of just a few. In the case of failure, Google has several “cloud zones” that can pick up any slack.