How Facebook Manages Its Massive Scale

Overview

• Facebook, the world's largest social networking site, valued at over $100 billion.
• Invented by Harvard students in 2004.
• Floated on the stock market in 2012 with a value of $104 billion.
• Growing at a rate of 100 million new users every six months.

The Challenge

• Handles profiles, photos, and messages of over one billion users.
• Managing personal data on a massive scale is a significant challenge.
• One engineer is responsible for every 1 million users.

Storage Infrastructure

• Main data center located in Prineville, Oregon.
• Facility size: 300,000 square feet, equivalent to three football fields.
• Construction cost: Hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Data stored in state-of-the-art servers and memory banks.
• 21 million feet of fiber optic cable.

Operation

• Data requests are processed and sent back in milliseconds.
• The internet is interconnected through physical buildings and miles of cables.
• Requires 30 megawatts of electricity.
• 14 large diesel generators as backup for potential power failures.

Cooling System

• State-of-the-art natural air conditioning system.
• Uses cool air from Oregon's high plains.
• Temperature regulated by mixing cool and warm air, controlled humidity.
• Excess heat expelled by large fans.

Growth and Expansion

• 600 million daily active users.
• Continuous delivery of thousands of servers.
• Storage measured in petabytes (100,000 times data of a high-end PC).
• Expansion underway to accommodate growing online activity.

Maintenance

• Technicians monitor and maintain server health.
• Example: Tracking down specific server racks for maintenance.
• Global internet users: 2.5 billion, spending 20% of online time on social networking.

Conclusion

• With enormous data and user activity, Facebook's infrastructure continues to expand and innovate to meet growing demands.