(upbeat music)
>> Live from San Francisco,
it's theCUBE, covering
Google Cloud Next 19.
Brought to you by Google Cloud
and its ecosystem partners.
>> Alright, welcome back to theCUBE's
live Google Next 19 coverage.
I'm John Furrier and Dave Vellante.
We're here for three days
of wall to wall coverage,
breaking down all the content from
Google Cloud's big conference here,
Google Next 2019.
Our next guest, Joe Cava,
Vice President of Google Data Centers,
spans all the data centers
that Google and Google Cloud deploy.
He's the man in charge of
thousands of full time employees,
thousands of contractors,
tens of thousands of construction workers.
He's building out the infrastructure
and footprint to make
the cloud work for us.
Joe, welcome to theCUBE.
>> Thank you both very much.
>> So Sundar Pichai, the CEO
Google kicked off the keynote,
the new CEO of Google Cloud,
Thomas Kurian came on all these eight,
seven, 10 weeks into the job.
Clearly the investment in Google Cloud,
new building on separate from campus.
So Google and Google Cloud
are two separate groups,
that's been been reported
clearly by us and others,
but at the end of the day,
you got to run all this
stuff on somewhere,
so you guys have deep, deep experience.
I know personally and following
Google and covering Google,
the excellence and engineering,
the excellence in
building on data centers.
What is the status of,
just quickly take a minute
to explain how its organized?
You got Google proper, which
is we're Renault's Google,
Google search, etc,
Gmail, and Google Cloud.
How's that operate with
some of the data points?
>> Okay.
So, as a head of the of the teams
that do everything from procuring land
and writing energy contracts and
buying renewable energy to designing,
building and operating
all the data centers,
Cloud is one of my largest customers,
but my other customers are
searching ads in Gmail, and G Suite.
And so really, our data centers at Google
are built for the entire
Google Enterprise,
and Cloud, it happens to be one of
our largest internal
customers in that enterprise.
>> Talk about some of the
stats, countries, regions,
data centers, what's the
new ones because you have
regions you availability zones,
talk about some of the
stats inside the numbers.
>> So at the starting at the Google level,
we have data centers in four continents.
So we're in North America, South America,
Asia and Europe, of course.
We have probably one of the world's
largest global private networks,
with, you know, 13 undersea
cables that are our own,
and hundreds of thousands of miles of
dark fiber and lit fiber that we operate,
like I said, probably one of
the world's largest networks.
We have in Europe, we're in
five countries in Europe,
we're in two countries in Asia,
we're in one country in South America.
And that's at the Google
and in North America,
of course, we have many, many, many sites
across all of North America.
That's at the Google level.
Now, Cloud has 19 regions that
they operate in, and 58 zones.
So each region, of course,
has multiple zones in it.
You know, we cover, Google has presence in
over 200 countries worldwide.
So really, it is truly
a global operations.
>> So the 200 countries is Google-wide,
the 19 Cloud regions in
58 availability zones,
that's Google Cloud, that's correct?
>> That's correct.
>> Okay, and so do you not sort of
mix infrastructure for
Cloud and things like
Gmail and maps and
searches, is that correct?
They're separate infrastructures?
>> It's not so separate infrastructure.
So when my team builds a data center,
any one of our internal customers
could be in that data set.
>> Right.
>> In addition to the Google
owned and operated data centers,
we also have some sites that are least
in certain regions and Cloud
may be occupying those,
but regardless of whether
it's owned or leased,
it's the same hardware in there.
It's the same operation
staff that are in there,
the same expertise,
the same deep knowledge about
operating cloud environments.
And so regardless of whether we built it,
or we leased it--
>> So from a CIO's perspective,
it's the same SLA number no matter what
availability zone.
>> Absolutely.
>> That's what really matters?
>> Right.
>> Okay.
>> Talk about the scale
because one of the things
I liked in the keynote,
Sundar is awesome, Chris, great keynote,
you scale multiple times.
He also had a clever comment on steel.
He's said before, publicly,
the amount of steel it
goes into building this.
This gives you guys large scale,
you guys are building a massive ...
I means it's like smart cities, almost,
because of your own, like, country,
pretty much now the infrastructure.
What are some of the key
learnings that you guys had?
Because you have to be very efficient.
Google likes to solve hard problems.
You guys have done some
things with sustainability,
specifically?
>> Yes.
>> Talk about some of the learnings
as you guys have been building out
these data centers for years
with Cloud on a massive expansion.
You got to watch the environment,
you got to do some things.
What are some of the learnings?
What are some of the
notable accomplishments
you guys are forging on?
And what are some of the goals?
>> So at Google, we've been
at this for two decades,
for more than 20 years,
we've been building and
innovating on hyperefficiency,
hyperscale, basically trying
to build infrastructure
that was more sustainable than
it'd ever been thought possible.
And then as our cloud
business started to expand,
and boom, frankly, we set apart to build
the world's most sustainable cloud.
And really, what that means is that
we were the first company to announce
that we were buying 100%
renewable energy ...
New renewable PPAs to match
100% of our consumption.
And in 2017, we achieved that.
That was after being carbon neutral
for 10 years before that.
So going all the way back to 2007,
we were a carbon neutral company,
by mostly buying high
quality carbon offsets.
Then we decided that
no, we want to advance
the transition to renewable
and sustainable energy.
So we started buying direct
power purchase agreements
for wind and solar.
And, and then in 2017,
we announced that we had matched 100%.
What that means is that we've
acquired over three gigawatts
of new solar and wind
power purchase agreements.
And now we're taking it a step further,
we have a very ambitious kind of moonshot,
arguably, to not only
match our consumption,
but match it 24 hours a day,
seven days a week 365.
So, you can imagine the
complexity with this
because the wind doesn't always blow,
the sun doesn't always shine.
And so that's going to
take moonshot-thinking
in order for us to get there,
but we feel so strongly about it.
We're so committed to this cause that
we've got dedicated team
working on this right now.
>> So it's not just squeezing
PUE out of the data center.
I'm sure you're doing that.
But I guess--
>> Absolutely, we've been doing
that since the earliest days.
I've been at Google for over 11 years.
From the very first day I got there,
I was completely blown away with the
numbers that I was seeing about the PUE
and for maybe your audience,
PUE is a measure of
efficiency in the data center.
And at the time, like back 2008,
Google was achieving numbers that
the EPA thought wouldn't be
achieved until like 2020.
And so I started to
dig in and look how and
it was astounding to me the lengths that
the company had gone to optimize
every single step of the way
from the high voltage transformers
in our own dedicated substations,
excuse me, that are much
more efficient than typical,
you know, utility transformers,
all the way through
minimizing the number of
transformations going from grid level,
like 345,000 volts down
to server voltage level,
minimizing the number of transformations,
reinventing the way people
think about cooling.
When I got to Google, I was also amazed.
Our data centers are running it, like,
roughly about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
Most data centers run at
like 65 degrees Fahrenheit,
our data centers consume about
half of the energy of a traditional
Enterprise Data Center at the same size.
And in addition to that,
we're producing about seven times
the compute capacity for
the same amount of watts.
That enterprise data center--
>> This goes from a
practice of engineering,
really purpose-built
engineering from the day one into
the overall holistic plan of the day.
>> Frankly, it's a relentless focus
on efficiency and innovation.
Right from day one, when I got there,
it had already been well in motion,
but it's optimizing
across the entire stack.
It's optimizing software, to be efficient.
Optimizing the server
architecture to be more efficient.
Optimizing the the power
supplies in the servers,
optimizing the racks, and, you know,
designing the racks to be working with the
cooling equipment specifically,
our cooling systems are unique to Google.
They're they're not traditional
air conditioning units
that you would buy for
traditional data centers.
Sometimes, you know,
where site data centers
where we can use natural
environment in Finland,
our data centers right
on the Gulf of Finland,
and we use cold sea water from
the Gulf of Finland to
cool the data center.
>> So to be clear, you're
doing some quite a bit of
vertical integration, whether
it's your own Transformers,
a power supplies and
other equipment, right?
>> Fiber optic across the Atlantic,
as Sundar pointed out.
>> That's right.
>> So doing your own stuff.
>> Absolutely.
>> And the efficiencies you pass on
and savings to the customers
and society with the with
the sustainability piece.
>> That's right.
>> So there's two angles
on that.
>> It really is, you know,
it's good business, of course,
because it's bottom line.
But more importantly, it's also the
right thing for us to do,
we feel very strongly that we need to
be responsible for our
impact on the environment,
and to minimize that impact
and to be accountable for it.
And we realized that the only way we can
truly be accountable for our
impact on the environment
and for our energy consumption,
is to have it matched with
renewable energy 24 hours a day,
seven days a week.
>> Yeah.
Let's take a sidetrack here.
But you know, we've been
covering the tech business
for many, many decades.
And certainly recently tech,
kind of got a bad name
because of some headlines.
But I always look for tech
stories that you know,
it was like, tech's bad for people.
There's always good story.
I think this is an
example of tech for good.
You guys are taking real engineering,
building large scale
systems and facilities
that have software running on it.
It's really a tech for good story.
So congratulations on that.
>> Thank you.
>> That's awesome work.
Now, I want to kind of ask you to
put you on the spot here
because I think one
conversation we're hearing a lot
and I want to get your
expert opinion on this,
could be Google and also
as a as a person in the industry.
Security in the supply
chain has come up a lot
in terms of whether
chips have been hacked.
We've heard things like that in the story.
Some of them have proved to
be misinformation, fake news.
But you got to watch security.
Google's really hardcore
on security, is you?
You live that?
How do you look at a supply chain?
Because if you're not just
throwing contracts at this,
you could taking a very holistic
Ground Zero engineering
approach to a holistic picture.
How do you guys manage
the security challenge
in the supply chain,
throughout the facilities,
from chips to access,
things of that nature?
>> Sure.
So there's two aspects,
there's always the logical and
the physical security aspect,
from the physical security aspect in
our warehouses that we manage, of course,
we apply the same rigorous
standards for physical security
that we we do at their data centers,
and that's multi layer and various
different types of security
technologies that we apply.
But on the logical side, you know,
I think you're probably
familiar with our Titan chips
that we developed and those Titan chips
are put in all of our servers.
And from the time that they're built
to the time that they're in the facility,
you know, those chip sets
are securing the servers.
>> And you've pointed--
>> And from the
logical side though, my colleagues on
our information security team
are truly the experts
that can address that.
>> And that's where the software shines.
>> That's right.
>> This is not just
one, it's not a siloed.
You got to drill physical build.
It's kind of a bigger, it's
a holistic, integrated model.
>> It is, and this is,
from the data center industry perspective,
for as long as there's been IT,
there's always been the debate
between facilities and IT, right?
When I got to Google, I
was also so relieved to see
that was all technical infrastructure.
And the IT systems, the
software that runs on those,
those data centers are all under the same
technical infrastructure group.
And so, it all ... the
buck stops at worse.
>> And so for years, there
was a discussion in ...
General IT about those
groups coming together?
And I think the way they
come together is the cloud,
frankly, because you
haven't seen a lot of change
within organizations of IT
and facilities really working together.
That's right.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> Well, Joe, thanks
for coming on the cube.
Thanks for sharing your insight.
Final Word, what's the thoughts,
folks watching out there who
were trying to understand
how to bring IP technology
into facilities in general?
I mean, a lot of people
still have data centers,
they still have on-premise activity
from light bulbs to whatever.
Any learnings in parting
wisdom, folks watching there,
in the facilities and or
physical building space
on how to build out these
whether it's smart cities,
whether it's in construction,
and experiences you could
share with folks out there
looking to build a
holistic long term plan.
>> Yeah, there's a there's a few things.
First of all, we've published
all of our energy efficiency,
best practices, and so
I encourage everyone
to take a look at those best practices
because the the best energy savings
is the energy not consumed
in the first place.
So do all the right things to
reduce the overall energy
consumption in the first place
to we want to help further
the transition to renewable energy.
And so we've published a lot
about our power purchase agreements.
And a lot of the policy
work that enables us
to do those is also set in place for other
large energy consumers that
want to do the same thing.
So our policy work can
help to allow others
to do the same thing.
The third part of our
sustainability aspect
is really a circular economy.
We want to have zero waste landfill.
We've currently achieve 91% diversion
of all of our data center operations.
So 91% is diverted to landfill.
But we have a objective of
a 100% no waste to landfill.
And then that means you
have to do smart things
like better reuse, better recycling,
better reselling of products
that are still good,
but maybe out of date for your use.
And then just to end it off, we've really
invested in our machine
learning and AI intelligence,
both on the data center operations,
we have now, ML running
some of our cooling systems
in fully autonomous mode
and doing a much better job
of matching the cooling needs
to the workloads at the time.
And we took that same learning
with our deep mind group
partnered with them,
and we've applied that to
a wind farm now as well,
so that they can better predict what
the output of the wind farm is going to be
36 hours in advance that allows
the operators of the grid
to better bring on more energy and
get higher value out of that wind energy.
>> Great engineering story at scale.
Congratulations, I love
the societal impact.
Tech for good, congratulations.
Love to have you back talking
about the impact of IoT.
(laughs)
Joe, thanks for coming on.
(mumbles)
>> It's all coming together.
Wind farms, data center,
and data set is not
going away in the cloud
needs to run on servers.
It has to be done in an engineer fashion,
Google's leading the charge
air secure, live coverage.
Day one of three days of coverage.
We'll be right back
after this short break.
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