How does Facebook manage its user’s data?

Ever wondered how the busiest site in the world, Facebook with over 500 million users manage itself? Started in February 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room initially with a single server, now has several web servers and storage units in data centers around the world.

Each data center contain a number of computer servers which are networked together and linked to the outside world through fiber optic cables. Every information shared or mentioned on Facebook is received by the servers in these data centers and further distributed all over the network. 🙂

There are more than 690 billion page views each month.Facebook requires huge data storage as Facebookers share more than 100 million photos per day. Regular photo uploads, likes, page views, status updates all these need a big storage. To manage all this Facebook has 9 data centers in United States, and is in process of adding more. With over 70% users outside United States none of the data centers are located outside. What can be the reason of such a thing?

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Facebook always used to lease the data centers from third-party landlords who build the data center including technical space, power and cooling infrastructure and then lease it completely. As Facebook is growing it needs more data centers now. Facebook people are making its first data center at Oregon. It is said this data center will be the biggest of all that is equal to two Wal Marts.

But as Facebook has a habit of being in news , recently Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace International, published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg due to its coal usage which leads to global warming. Earlier the only data center present there was of Google. Well, Facebook should try to go green and make as many data centers as possible so that we may not face downtimes like 23 september and today’s morning one.

What do you think? Share your views through comments here. 🙂