A Glimpse Inside a Facebook Server Farm (8 images)

A Tour inside Facebook's Santa Clara, California data center. The data center holds tens of thousands servers.

Check out 7 more images after the jump.

These rows of servers are set up to minimize the energy required to keep the data center running.

A close up of the servers in two racks.

The center includes sophisticated coolings systems and back up power supplies.

Cables connect servers in the center with each other and the entire facility with the outside world.

The center was constructed using a "layered replication" model that makes failure almost impossible, even if a regional power system blacks out.

The facility where photographer Martin Schoeller took these photos is located 25 minutes by car from Facebook's headquarters. The company is currently building a state-of-the-art data center in Prineville, Oregon, among other sites.

The servers process updates to Facebook users' pages as quickly as possible, so that a comment or post is live within seconds. Multiply that across 550 million (and counting) users and the power of the data center becomes awesome indeed.

Source: Time.com