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November 26, 2006
Google Tech Talk and Campus Tour: Mind Blowing!
posted by ariIf you have been hoping to make it to a JUG session on Terracotta DSO, Google hosted one for their engineers. They recorded it and put it up on Google Video.
I loved the questions, the equipment for the presentation, and their facilities are downright amazing. I included a few notes in the extended entry.
Their questions:
1. Scalability - everyone asks about our Terracotta Server. Short answer is to cluster the hub. But we are doing really kewl things in the next year with WAN, DR, and load balancing. Google folks readily understood where we are going and why
2. Stateful vs. Stateless - Always at least one engineer points out that Serialization can be customized to handle Application A/B testing without throwing serialization exceptions, etc. This is true. But most people don't even realize they have to do such things till it is too late and errors are being generated in a production environment.
3. Shared Memory clustering - Terracotta is not shared memory clustering and the value of such an approach has diminished in recent years with higher performance JVMs. Most folks needn't run 2 or more JVMs on a single dual core machine. In fact, our only customers doing this are those running large application server farms on larger 8 - 12 CPU machines.
As for Google's equipment and facilities, the highlights for me were:
1. The EngEDU system had 3 campuses automatically dialing in to our conference. 5 minutes before the session started, 2 loud beeps were heard and I was notified, "you are now live in Washington..."
2. Their podium had DVI and Mac power plumbed straight in. First place I have been where I didn't need to break out all my adapters. They even had a remote for my MacBook Pro so that I could change slides wirelessly (I lost mine recently).
3. They gave me special tchotchkies just for Google EDU speakers. I have a custom t-shirt, a scarf, and other kewl stuff. Awesome.
As for their facilities, I am not sure what is under the automatic NDA one signs when entering their building. All I can suggest is that if you have friends who work at Google, pay them a visit. Their people are all so productive and happy it is amazing.