Google Uncloaks Their Once-Secret Server

photo credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET

Most companies buy servers from the likes of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, or Sun Microsystems. But Google, which has hundreds of thousands of servers and considers running them part of its core expertise, designs and builds its own.

Ben Jai, who designed many of Google's servers, unveiled a modern Google server before the hungry eyes of a technically sophisticated audience. Big surprise: each server has its own 12-volt battery to supply power if there's a problem with the main source of electricity.

The company also revealed for the first time that since 2005, its data centers have been composed of standard shipping containers - each with 1,160 servers and a power consumption that can reach 250 kilowatts.