At the Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco, the internet search giant opened up about how it secures, operates and stress-tests its growing cloud datacentre fleet.
The sheer number of users and services the datacentres of the hyperscale cloud giants have to support has prompted many providers to rip up the design rulebook on how to kit out and connect the huge number of facilities they operate around the world.
Instead of building singular, standalone facilities that are backed up to a datacentre at another location, they favour the creation of multiple, huge, campus-like server farms that are devoid of any single points of failure to guard against downtime.
Hyperscale operators often opt for custom-made hardware designed with specific workloads in mind, which is bought in huge quantities to ensure – as more users flock to their services – they have seemingly infinite capacity to cope with the demand.
