The Infrastructure Behind of Cloud Computing

Have you heard about Cloud Computing, haven't you? I think so... But, if you do not work with Information Technology, I think you do not know many details about the structure that companies that are offering this technology has to have inside their Data Centers.

**Note: This post was translated from "Os bastidores da nuvem", writen by Gilberto Mautner and published at "Info Blogs".

Ok, let's go ahead...
To create an Internet Service Provider based on Cloud Computing, or something like this, the companies need to have many computers in their Data Centers, but these computers cannot be simple machines, I mean, these computers must be super machines. They are the Server Machines!

To be a Server Machine, the computer should hav more powerfull processors, much more memory, and much more disk space.

To see one of many models of actual Servers, Click Here.

Server Machines, not as many people think about, do not need a keyboard and a monitor to each of these one (of course, there is exceptions, in case of maintenance, for example.). Because of it, commonly they are stacked in furnitures called “Racks”, looking for to put as many machines as they can. If you want to see an example of it, Click Here.

“Racks”, how it must to be, are put in longs passageways, as we can see right here

Cloud services, as many of we know, must to stay always available, I mean, they must to stay on line 24x7. They cannot be turn off or stay unavailable across a minimal period of time, even if energy get down. Because of this too, Data Centers has in their infrastructure, for example, diesel generators, to supply energy during a period like that.
It is too important that, in many cases, there is Redundancy of Generators in most of companies, in other words, if one of these generators get down, the other start to work immediately.

Another thing, related to energy and generators; Data Centers must to keep diesel reserves to garantee the energy during a long periods of time, supplying power to generators. Problems like blackout can happen, as well as we saw in november of 2009. We can see an Underground Tank here, like an exemple. This tank has 30.000 liters of capacity. A tank like that can provide energy by 7 days, without us charge it again.

Another important components are the “No-breaks”. As well as we can see, these components are responsible to keep the energy up in the machines, even during a short period of time to the generators to get started to work, what happen commonly after a few seconds, in case of energy problems or somethings like that.

There is some equipments with removable batteries, which is really sofisticated, that allow us to change one or another battery, in the case of problems, but without to have to stop all the equipment, I mean, some no-breaks use the hot swap system.

To increase much more the services quality, looking for to keep the enviroment always up, the most of Servers have two or more independent outlets and each outlet is plugged on independent circuits, in other words, it is plugged on in diferent no-breaks.

Untill now, we have just talked about how is important to keep the energy working up among the Servers. But it is not everything!

The processors, the CPUs, I mean, the “mind” of the machines, installed inside the Servers get too hot.
Why does it happen? When you do a request executing a software, a lot of informations are send through the system. These informations are transformed in eletric energy, running up inside to the CPU core. To solve this question, which we can see like a problem, there is many ways, many techinics.

Dangerous problems or Disasters, if you do prefer, can happen at any moment inside the Data Centers. The most normal situation, about this issue, are wildfires. Its because of the high level of eletric energy running over the place. The companies must have a professional infrastructure (and tools!) to eliminate something like this.

Well, as well as we can see a little bit through at this post (and this! ;-P), the enviromental behind of Cloud Computing must be really well prepared. It seems like an industrial infrastructure. About the software, this enviroment is beyond of Operational System, network and things like these. Thermodinamic, chimical reactions against wildfires and so on.

*Ps: The pictures published/cited here are taken from Locaweb Data Center.


Below, there is one of the many videos available at YouTube.
In this video, some of the biggest personalities of IT and related are talking about it.