The Google Mini - A look at Google's entry-level search appliance
by Liz van Dijk on December 21, 2007 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- IT Computing
Introduction
Since the arrival of AnandTech's very own Google Mini, Google has issued several updates to this little blue box. We're taking a look at Google's present-day Mini to provide up-to-date insights on this search solution for small-to-medium-sized businesses. The Mini product line currently sports four different licenses, ranging from $1,995 for the ability to search through 50,000 documents, to $8,995 for a machine that will handle up to 300,000 documents. Buyers can opt for an extra year of customer support, which will raise the price by $995. The Google Mini's hardware is identical, regardless of which license one chooses, and all the license plans offer full functionality.
Google's updates to the Mini resulted in a physically smaller enclosure and quite a few new features, some of which we will discuss specifically later in this article. We also investigated the benefits of the Mini's integration with Google Analytics, and to top it off, we did some benchmarking to see exactly how the Mini performs.
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GhandiInstinct - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
lollegoman666 - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
I would have expected this product to be a few years old with hardware like that. A prescott? seriously. And no RAID?razor2025 - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
It's a search engine appliance. The product's main focus is in its software algorithm, not how "fast" the hardware itself is. Why would it need RAID? Any sane network/system administrator will have this box backed up in regular interval to the backup array / server. RAID != back up and this product doesn't need the file system performance either.legoman666 - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
I didn't comment about the prescott and the lack of RAID based on a performance concern. The precott is hot and inefficient, why not get something that uses less power (IE, a C2D) even if it doesn't need the added processing power of a newer chip? That way, they could market it as a effiecient device or green or whatever.As for the RAID, I am not talking about RAID0 (technically that's not even raid), I was leaning more towards RAID1 or RAID5. They mentioned in the review that it took 36 hours to crawl to the 50000 document capcacity, I'm sure most people wouldn't want their search function down for 36 hours while the engine reindexes because it wasn't backed up. Not only that, but you'd probably have to send it back to Google for repairs with only a single drive. With 2 in RAID1, if one dies, a replacement could easily be swapped in.
razor2025 - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
Maybe it's an option you can request to Google. As for your take on RAID, you're still treating it as Backup. It would be must simpler if they had a second backup google mini instead. Look, they're charging you for the license per document, not how many mini you have hooked up. Also, it's in a 1U form factor. I highly doubt they can manage to squeeze in another drive to satisfy your "RAID!" obsession.Justin Case - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
Backups take time to restore from. RAID1 means no downtime. It *is* a backup, and one that's available instantly.It doesn't replace regular, preferably _remote_ backups, but it's a pretty basic feature of any system designed to have zero downtime.
reginald - Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - link
RAID and backup are two entirely different things. No RAID in the world can protect you against the same things as backups can (handling errors, programs incorrectly overwriting data, etc). And backups can never replace RAID to achieve continuous availability.Thinking you need no backups because you have RAID is like thinking you need no seatbelt because you've got insurance. They simply aren't the same.
rudder - Friday, December 21, 2007 - link
Prescott performance aside... as the article mentioned this is a 24/7 device... why use such a toaster of a cpu when Core2Duos would not add a whole lot to the bottom line?Calvin256 - Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - link
If you're looking at the prices as a consumer, that may be the case, but you need to rememeber that Google/Gigabyte is not you or I. When purchasing in bulk those processors can be VASTLY cheaper than we could ever hope to pay, even when they're in the bargain bin at shadyetailer.com. Things made for consumers can easily be marked up 200-2000%, things made for OEMs might have a 50-100% margin.