I would think Google would do something more on the lines of massive distributed utility computing with Xen. Think about it, Google has been able to cluster allot of machines for there search engine and distributed file systems. In fact if you have read anything on how the web crawlers index information you know they run a large distributed shop. So you take Xen and modify it to run on GoogleFS ( What ever they call there Distributed Filesystem) then you give each account / client access to that VM on what ever OS they would like to run. That is only if they do a typical web hosting environment.
If they do a managed hosting type environment same thing they just have scripts to manage and setup VM's and allocate memory as needed. I think this might only be feasible if google was to upgrade there systems with Infiniband cards. That way they can use memory, I/O , disk and network bandwidth all on one high speed bus. I don't know if google runs gmail and other services on dedicated systems that are separate from there search engine. I would think they run Google Earth on dedicated systems and maybe there web metrics service as well. Google is going to offer a PayPal like service I thought this was a myth going around the Internet when I first heard it. Then I started seeing screen shots on dig and /. . I know they have to have separate dedicated systems for there back end databases and machines that connect to bank networks and or systems for money transfers. I would not be surprised is HP is trying to sell google there non-stop hardware on Itanium CPU's and or letting Google be a EAP (Early Access Program) site and using there non-stop systems for free in the event that Google would buy the systems after the EAP. My $0.02 Mike Miller _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
