Ever wondered what's hiding inside those yellow or blue-colored servers Google sells for a nice sum of $$$? Look no further… especially if you're a company that is losing track of all those hundreds of thousands of documents. So, why not utilize the search algorithms from the largest company in the search business, the all-mighty Google? This search engine giant sells two types of servers, dubbed Google Boxes. Retail names are a bit less cooler: Google Mini Search Appliance and Search Appliance.
Google's two boxes aren't different inside, but for the fact that yellow box offers RAID data protection...
As you can see in picture above, Mini Search can search for up to 300,000 documents, while Search Appliance can search up to 30 million documents and comes at a "customized" price. If you ever wondered who is in charge of manufacturing, look no further than familiar name of Giga-Byte Technology Co., Ltd. We knew that GigaByte made the original Google Box but had no idea that the relationship continued until this day.
Looking at the inside of the box...
The Google Search Appliance is based on following components:
- Intel Xeon Nocona, NetBu(r)st architecture, unknown clock, 800 MHz FSB
- GigaByte GA-9IVDP, Intel 7320 MCH + 6300 ESB chipset
- 8x1GB DDR2-400
- 2x Hitachi Deskstar 1TB HDD, RAID1
- Magnetek 300W PSU, 280W output
That's about it. As you can see, Google's paramount was to reach as low a BoM [Bill of Materials] as possible and the inside of the case definitely don't look elegant as much as the outside part. But hey, there are ton of companies and websites that can testify that this box works.
