10 Billion Facebook Photos - Is That Ecologically Sustainable?

Facebook Engineer Doug Beaver has announced that the social networking site now hosts 10 Billion photos & Facebook has just over one petabyte of photo storage. Since Facebook stores 4 sizes for each stored picture, this actually translates to 40 Billion files, of those 33.2 billion were added within the last 17 months. Doug also reports that over 300,000 images are served per second.
If Facebook were a nation, it would be the world’s 12th most populous & there would be very little doubt about whether it is sustainable as a business. But “Is Facebook sustainable ecologically”?
Some quick maths:Earlier GigaOm reported Facebook to have around 10,000 servers & last May Facebook reportedly borrowed $100 million to purchase another 50,000 servers.
Going by Doug’s number -in order to support those 300,000 images, Facebook requires 10,000 servers as well as the 300,000 users PCs. Conservatively, a PC consumes 120 watts and a server consumes 200 watts. Add in another 50 watts per server for data-center air conditioning. So, at any point of time, overall Facebook power consumption equals:
(10,000 x 250 ) + (300,000 x 120) = 38,500 Kw or 51,629 HP
That’s an awesome number of horses !!
Hence on an estimated ballpark - Facebook daily consumes 924,000 KiloWatt-Hours with per capita of 3.08 KWh . Annually the per capita figure would be 1124 KWh /year or equivalent to emission of 0.75 ton of green house CO2 (Carbon footprint) which is half of NY city’s carbon footprint. Sadly with Facebook adding more ‘horses’ (50K more servers) to cater to our photo addiction - this number would increase to 1 ton of CO2 .
Please Consider Environment Before Uploading Your Photos On Facebook
‘Green computing‘ remains a buzz word in 2008 & subsequent years. However the BIG question is with plethora of options for Green Web Hosting available - shouldn’t Facebook, the most successful contemporary social network, consider one?

Different views but the same thought

Phew! I'ts been quite a while I've noted something here but a lot has been happening in the last month or so and I've taken note of all events and learnings from them. One of them...

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, as refracted through rain drops on the window of an automobile, which act as lenses. In optics, refraction occurs when light waves travel from a medium with a given refractive index to a medium with another, whereupon the wave's phase velocity is altered, causing the wave to change direction; its wavelength increases or decreases but its frequency remains constant.

Inspiration

In the last couple of years, I've been doing things a bit differently than how I used to.

Started thinking about working collectively, about people management (managing their skills with the job at hand), managing them according to "our" needs than only my needs, business approach as compared to a media approach, Zero error processes (you can take my word from the least grammatical/spelling errors in this note), more pro-active, being a bit less aggressive, etc etc etc.

Today, Nikhil (my ex-boss at Starcom and good friend) exchanged some notes on Facebook and were talking about what's happening in our lives, progress and professional stuff. He actually brought light to the fact that I have changed.

Suddenly, as I work with my entire team in office on a huge pitch... this Facebook conversation strikes me...as I get into some introspection and think to myself...I've changed!!!! just as you know one day that the grass on the lawn has grown and needs a mow but don't realize this each day I look at it!

I remember Nikhil's words in the converasation "Agree Ravi is a big inspiration to all of us and whats even more heart warming is that in spite of not working with him, he still has an influence over YOU :)"

My previous notions were "You define your destiny and you decide what you must do!" but I was proven wrong and I can take Nikhil's word for it. It's been this man, Ravi (and not to forget Nikhil) who has changed the way I think about life (professional or personal). In fact, I started blogging due to the mere fact that I've been following Ravi's blogs and trying to get the most of what is written and I'm writing this as I checked Nikhil's message and then read Ravi's updated blog on risk.

All I would wish to say is ...Ravi, thank you for this :)

How to tread your path to reach the infinite challenges

Doesn't this look blissful? This was shot at Yosemite National Park. Summer is one of the best but also the most crowded times at our country's national parks, so it's refreshing to see a great nature shot with nary a human to clutter the view.

This photo is great not only for the scenery but also because it's nicely framed (just like we would like to lead our lives). I like how the lone hiking path cuts across the foreground, winding off into unknown. The tree on the right is also a nice counterpoint to the gorgeous waterfall on the upper left. Just imagine yourself hiking down this peaceful path, the vista of the park's mountains looming in the distance.

Learning from the Journey: Exactly the way we would like to approach our goals (infinite ones) balancing all the other pressures!

Sportsman's spirit, attitude, beliefs and values

Yesterday was a good day!

Our office guys collectively attended the karting competition at the Dubai Autodrome. I wasn't participating in the competition as i did not qualify among our office colleagues so thought of being there as the Manager of the team, trying to figure out strategy for qualifying and the finals. This idea struck me from the F1 races....of being the manager of the team :). I had a new business meeting in the afternoon so was in the "modern" Manager's attire....a black suit and a white shirt...ala football team Managers.

We were performing pretty well...starting from P7 on the grid, dropped to P10, steadily worked our way through the opponents one by one....P9,P8,P7,P6,P5 and finally to P4 in the first 15 minutes of the 75 minute endurance race. Strategy was working pretty well and we were in a comfortable position. In the next 15 minutes we were at P3...really good job from the team!

We maintained this position but only in the ultimate minute of the race...we conceded P3 to P4.

The race over...all 5 drivers with a sulky face.....but it was great fun...c'mon we participated for the first time whilst the others were like professionals but the race was good and overall (with the sportsman's spirit that we all had) we enjoyed it tremendously.

Learning for us - from this occasion as well as innumerable others
- keep up the sportsman's spirit
- strategize keeping in mind others points of view
- its not about winning the silver...its about losing the gold (though we were fighting for the bronze)
- keep the enthusiasm and the grit to win right from the beginning and till the end...till you win

ways of learning new things

I was chatting on fb with my friend Aabha and as we were discussing work and personal life...she was telling me about her hectic schedules and no time to have a personal life. I asked her about her old hobbies like dancing which she could still pursue.....hmmm....it was "kathak" and randomly we started talking about which "gharana" of kathak is she learning from, the gurus of that gharana and some new, younger stars of kathak these days.

The talk about the dance form continued for a couple of minutes and I asked her if she was wondering how I knew so much about kathak! She did ask me how.

Simply, I told her that i used to learn this form of dance when i was 6 yrs old and continued it for some 17 months and to the extent that i had shaved off my head to learn this.

This form of conversations (and not the dance ;)), i make with many people and on random topics i don't have knowledge about. With this conversation going on...side by side...i was surfing (the easiest way to find information on "kathak") on Wikipedia.

If I do such conversations practically with all my buddies/aquaintances, imagine the amount of knowledge I would gain!!!

Knowledge is what needs to be pursued...not the ego that is based on the current knowledge you have!

How we show ourselves calm that too under pressure

Taken in Milano Centrale station, this photo manages to capture the hurried rush of two people running to catch their trains. But at the same time, being taken in black and white, the photo miraculously makes the central station seem very calm and organized.