Google powers its immense database on an estimated 450,000 x86 PCs operating on customized versions of Linux with 80GB to 400GB capacity hard drives.
Now, a report put forth by three Google engineers, Eduardo Pinheiro, Wolf-Dietrich Weber and Luiz Andre Barroso, which has examined 100,000 commercial hard drives, has revealed shocking data about the failure of “off-the-shelf” drives that are being used to store cached web pages and services.
The report concludes that the impact of heavy usage and high temperatures on hard disk drive failure might be gaudy. Authors cited that ‘Our data indicate a much weaker correlation between utilisation levels and failures than previous work has suggested.‘
The internet giant has got its own file system to systematize the storage of data by using economical commercially available hard drives instead of bespoke systems. The report promulgated the fact that the hard drives that have been in use for less than three years and are recurrently used are less prone to failure when compared to the hard drives of the same age that are used from time to time.
The report further explained that the lower temperatures are allied with higher failure rates. Anyway, the hard drives that are in use for more than three years are more susceptible to failure when used in warmer temperatures.
The new report will undoubtedly benefit the server designers while enabling the operating temperatures for paraphernalia integrating disk drives.
Via: BBC
