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The Wolfram|Alpha Launch Team

Rack ’n’ Roll

April 30, 2009 —
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Take a peek at our system administration team hard at work on one of the
many pre-launch projects.

51 Comments

that video was exciting!

Posted by jasonspalace April 30, 2009 at 9:21 pm

    The music is pornish but the pictures are interesting; I visited the site pointed to in the previous link and find that we launch in May, but apparently not yet in May.

    Posted by Ted Rowland May 2, 2009 at 11:15 am

Is this a hoff video? I bet it is….
where is the narrator track explaining what this massive computer does?
Can I have a job working with you please???
Joe Rothberger

Posted by JoeRothberger April 30, 2009 at 11:25 pm

Racking up server is a blast, as long as you don’t have to redo anything.

Posted by Alan Savoy April 30, 2009 at 11:46 pm

Very cool! Good to see there is room for expansion too

Posted by James May 1, 2009 at 12:34 am

To be well prepared for user demand and technology evolution, …

… please make your service accessible for mobile users !

I will happily test it on mobile devices and
spread the word within my (web) communities focusing mobile devices:

LinkedIn Group “Windows Mobile” (~1000 members)
http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=73269
XING “Windows Mobile Business Forum” (~1500 members)
http://www.xing.com/net/wmc
Learnbemobile (new German website for info and reference on mobile devices)
http://www.learnbemobile.com
PPC-Welt (well established German Pocket PC Web Community, > 40000 members)
http://www.ppc-welt.info/community
Club Pocket PC München (local user group)
http://www.pocketpc-muenchen.de
and several other communities in Germany / Central Europe

Posted by Franz Haslbeck May 1, 2009 at 4:01 am

I can’t wait anymore to see….. how wolfram Alpha is going to change the whole search scenario

Posted by charakjagan May 1, 2009 at 5:50 am

    Wolfram Alpha is an amazing ambitious project. It isn’t going to change the search industury in the sense you may be thinking. Wolfram Alpha is going to build on what we have and offer different and exciting services to us all. Search engines, like Google, will continue to do what they do best. Wolfram Alpha is different.

    Posted by Ernest May 1, 2009 at 9:15 pm

Es increible!!
Que poco queda para el cambio!

Posted by danielkelvin May 1, 2009 at 6:51 am

The anticipation builds, I am waiting to see this thing come live 🙂 But I hope there is enough power behind these servers, there will be the whole internet hammering on them in the first days.

Posted by Bjoern-Christian Boenkost May 1, 2009 at 10:17 am

A question on your rack installation:

I didn’t notice any in rack cooling being installed (maybe I missed it), are you guys using any sorts of point of use cooling or are you using the existing room a/c? I’d think you have those racks pretty full for ambient cooling, especially since you already have the raised flooring and drop ceiling to run duct.

Just curious.

Posted by Dan May 1, 2009 at 3:13 pm

As someone who’s personally worked in computer rooms and data centers since the late 1970’s, I know and have lived this video, and what all is required to bring up a server farm.

It would be nice to see W|A track the electricity and cooling used to support these servers…Maybe this data center should look into having solar-panel backup? Having no idea where this data center is located, I’m assuming there is some sunlight available to store power?

We used to keep 6-packs of Fosters beer under the raised floor. It was like a large fridge and we’d try to find beer under random floor tiles!

Good luck.

Dan
PS> I’m a long-time Mathematica user – since the late 1980’s, when it was available only on the Mac…

Posted by Dan Dalal May 1, 2009 at 5:23 pm

Well… . I’m waiting, the date of launch was fot TODAY 1st of May…. .
Regards!,
gab

Posted by Gabriel Medina May 1, 2009 at 6:11 pm

we wait with bated breath, good luck 🙂

Posted by Kier May 1, 2009 at 6:33 pm

wow!!! thats a lot of servers. I had no idea it will take so many servers and huge amount people and cost to start a good project, atleast that biggg.

My one computer gets so heated, not sure how much heat they generate by placing on top of each other. Hopefully there will be no fire.

Posted by Damodar Bashyal May 1, 2009 at 7:16 pm

我很想知道你们的alpha到底什么时候才能支持中文呢?
现在Google,yahoo等都能够支持中文了

Posted by 中国龙 May 1, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Do you have a plan to support Chinese? We have seen that in Google, Yahoo…

    Posted by 中国风 May 4, 2009 at 4:44 am

Hope you didnt lease the building, but bought it. Waiting for the day. I too would like to be a mobile tester. I come from a different field, please don’t lock me out, Law Enforcement we need this to protect the people.

Posted by Skip Michael May 1, 2009 at 8:47 pm

Hello Team,
The video was great – I watched carefully. I know you worked/are working hard on it, both on the setting up of the system and the video itself. As a very small critisism it lacked the joint team’s (smiling of course) picture at the end when you switched on and all those leds operated for the first time! That would have been a good shot. Good luck with your venture – these computer systems and the internet as a whole are just unbelievable!
Ron VK5AKR, Tanunda, South Australia …

Posted by Ron May 1, 2009 at 9:27 pm

You guys are having too much fun! Nothing like un-boxing and installing the hardware!

Posted by Robert May 1, 2009 at 9:40 pm

You’re building your own server room? Um, why?

Posted by Will Merydith May 1, 2009 at 9:41 pm

Nice vid..is that all required to start a search engine..thats g8..i wish wolframAlpha team will give the details about there resources 🙂

Posted by Arpit May 1, 2009 at 9:55 pm

When in May, 2009?

Posted by Bill Coyne May 1, 2009 at 10:38 pm

branch? LANGUGES?

Posted by branch? LANGUGES? May 2, 2009 at 12:49 am

Looks like it was good fun!
One step closer for end user testing?

Posted by D May 2, 2009 at 1:02 am

Longest, most boring Dell (and Cisco) ad I’ve ever seen

Posted by dr. h. May 2, 2009 at 1:23 am

So is this one of a number of clusters around the world or is it just this one for day one?

It looks like you guys need to be signing up a serious renewable energy supply contract with someone too, that or plant a helluva lot of trees to offset those servers when running!

Posted by Stuart May 2, 2009 at 2:08 am

Agree with dr. h – crap so far, hope the services provided has multimillon x times of delivery

Posted by Dr. T May 2, 2009 at 3:28 am

I will love to see the same video after 20 years again 🙂

Posted by Kiran May 2, 2009 at 3:53 am

It’s always good to see theory becoming reality! Good Luck!

Posted by sean May 2, 2009 at 3:58 am

Very interesting! I wish I could’ve been there.

Posted by sp4566 May 2, 2009 at 7:51 am

hope you did not get all the DELL equipment from Dell boy .lol
Dell boy is a character in ~only fools and horses ~UK tv series
waiting for you to be up and running
may all go well

Posted by mick gee May 2, 2009 at 8:22 am

Ya o de una vez???

Posted by Valdemar May 2, 2009 at 9:45 am

Fabulous -and not long ago I was worried about changing a graphic card
Big is beautiful

Posted by Richard Watson May 2, 2009 at 10:33 am

Bien, bien y ahora a trabajar….

Posted by Ulyses May 2, 2009 at 12:12 pm

and now so what! expected to see more in relation to the the soft.
but great!
marc

Posted by Marc Milla May 2, 2009 at 1:37 pm

Muito massa, very good
quem me dera trabalhar com voces

Posted by Tales Luander May 2, 2009 at 2:25 pm

Wow, makes me miss the days I had with various startup ventures, building everything from the ground up. Makes me want to join you guys in the fun. Good luck and may you have great success! JAH

Posted by jtechrep May 2, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Hi, similar to my job. Structuring ,Ericsson AXE, digital telephone systems , routers, racks etc.
Good luck to your attempts

Posted by gant0709 May 2, 2009 at 5:01 pm

Surprised to see traditional JBOD servers in such a large environment where everything was brought in new? Any technical reason not to use blade servers or disk less traditional servers with a proper SAN behind it? Power consumption and space would have been drastically reduced and de-duplication of data, faster replacements, on the fly backups without the need to quiesce the databases, etc…

Nice to see it getting of the ground can’t wait to use the tool just puzzled with the hardware side of things.

Posted by sb May 3, 2009 at 4:55 pm

hello …
i whant too say it’s a god idea to have another search engine and brvo too you it’s big and good may gad help you all Very interesting! I wish I could’ve been there just too help you and see it in the reality 🙂

Posted by ahmad May 3, 2009 at 7:41 pm

Although it all sounds very exciting, I really do not think what is promised by Wolfrmalpha can deliver the results with a single rack of hardware. It may only take the load for couple of thousands of people with all that heavy calculations to serve. You need a city block size super computer to serve millions of people.

Posted by Be May 4, 2009 at 1:18 am

While your methodology may be inspirational as well as groundbreaking, how are your going to handle government censorship of information as well as spying on individual browsing habits? While you may have devised a better mousetrap, there’s a bigger rodent your trap can’t catch or ignore.

Posted by Major Domo May 4, 2009 at 1:43 am

Hoping to test your efforts real soon… You will have a winner when you launch, it’s a much needed system for serious researchers and knowledge junkies..!

Posted by Bradley Bell May 4, 2009 at 1:49 am

Merhaba;

Bu yeni arama motoru internet dünyasında bilgiye ulaşmada rekabeti artırarak kaliteyi de beraberinde getireceği için hayırlı olsun diyorum.

Posted by Cuneyt Yavuz May 4, 2009 at 5:38 am

Сколько эти все серверы стоят?
How much money does all this servers cost???

Posted by Juriy May 4, 2009 at 7:18 am

Brilliant! Congratulations, can’t wait to try it out 🙂

Posted by Tony Black May 4, 2009 at 8:11 am

Ok that’s not even music, thats just noise pretending to be music, i thought you’d have done better than that.

Wasn’t there a mathematica thing for doing ringtones or sum such… should have used that.

Nice ad for Dell, did you get a discount 😉

Posted by Steve May 4, 2009 at 10:23 am

The music comments are right on…wolframtones is the way to go and brand ALPHA. It is a program highly underrated, even by the Wolfram community.
Look at Apple, (not DELL), to see how sound and visuals are actually an integrated representation of the product.
I am excited with the new search methods in ALPHA, because it promises to help any user (like me) do more and do it better. But fans like me will also challenge it…

Posted by nyc1now May 4, 2009 at 1:23 pm

dell dell dell dell dell cisco dell dell dell dell cisco dell =)

Posted by doOb May 4, 2009 at 1:31 pm

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