It takes massive amounts of computing power to run a tech company the size of Google and they have data centers that are running 24/7/365. It’s hard to imagine the enormity of those data centers and what it takes to run them. To give us a behind the scenes look, Google has set up a 360° virtual tour of their Oregon Data Center to show exactly what life is like inside the facility that houses data for billions of people. The video below is pretty awesome (minus the obvious scripted dialogue and bad acting). Google suggests you watch this video in 4K and even better, use Google Cardboard for the best experience. So if you have your smartphone handy and some sort of VR device, fire up YouTube and take a look at the video below. You can also use Google Chrome and navigate around using the arrow pad on the video itself.
The Oregon Data Center is just one of Google’s many data centers that provide services like Gmail, Google Drive, Google Play Store and much more, here’s the list of every Google Data Center (that is listed publicly).
- Berkeley County, South Carolina
- Council Bluffs, Iowa
- Douglas County, Georgia
- Jackson County, Alabama
- Lenoir, North Carolina
- Mayes County, Oklahoma
- Montgomery County, Tennessee
- Quilicura, Chile
- The Dalles, Oregon
- Changhua County, Taiwan
- Singapore
- Dublin, Ireland
- Eemshaven, Netherlands
- Hamina, Finland
- St Ghislain, Belgium
Data centers take a lot of work to maintain and even after watching that video it’s hard to imagine the hours Google workers put in to maintain these facilities. Everything from cleaning to maintaining the servers is an intensive job. We all just cross our fingers that the computer security team is working hard to keep hackers from gaining access to that plethora of user data.
What did you think of Google’s Oregon Data Center? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
Last Updated on January 23, 2017.
