most servers

A recent infographic on Intect shines a bright light on a statistic many hosts would like to keep secret: the number of servers they operate.

Whether they fear they might be seen as too small or too large, many hosts keep this information buried. However, Intec was able to compile numbers on 15 of the industry’s largest players and make an educated estimate on another.

Though the numbers themselves are not perfect, being based on estimates from Data Center Knowledge, they provide an interesting glimpse behind the scenes of some of the Web’s largest hosting companies and other providers. While the size of a hosting company is no guarantee of quality, these numbers may be able to help you decide on what host you want to put your site with.

How Big Are The Hosts?

By far the largest “host” on the list was Google, with an estimated 1 million plus servers. Though this was merely an estimation, it is a number that easily towers over everyone else on the chart. For example, Intel, the next largest competitor, has only 100,000 servers and Facebook, seemingly Google’s biggest rival, has only 30,000.

However, when you start looking at companies that we think of as web hosts, things get interesting. The largest traditional host on the list is 1&1 Internet, with 70,000 servers. They are followed by the popular European host OVH, which has 65,000. Rackspace (including Rackspace Cloud) came in at just over 56,000 servers and The Planet, which also includes Hostgator, has just over 48,000.

Other popular Web hosts on the list include Softlayer, with 21,000, Apple’s iWeb, with 10,000, and Peer1/Serverbeach, with about 10,000 between them.

Unfortunately, many of the better-known largest hosts were not included in the list including Microsoft, Amazon (including its S3/Cloudfront service), Godaddy and Yahoo.

However, the missing heavy-hitters aren’t the only problem that these statistics face in extrapolating the numbers into real-world performance.

Server Number Doesn’t Matter: It’s What You Do With It That Counts

The biggest problem with looking at raw server numbers is that they are fairly meaningless on their own. As anyone who has shopped for a computer recently can tell you, not all CPUs are created equal and it is possible to get one system with the power/storage/capability of several of another. You can see this clearly on The Planet’s dedicated server page.

Google, for example, is well known for buying cheap, expendable servers and just replacing them as they die off. The idea is that lots of cheap servers that can be quickly replaced or routed around offers greater reliability than a smaller number of more powerful ones.

While Google may be right about the improved reliability, it also means Google’s network is not likely 30x more powerful than Facebook’s. In fact, looking at traffic stats (which doesn’t count Google’s products on other domains), the two appear to be closer to evenly matched.

While there is little doubt that Google has the largest network of its kind, its numbers are likely exaggerated when looking at CPU power. Likewise, companies that specialize in high-end dedicated servers, such as Serverbeach, are likely under-represented.

The bigger problem, however, is how these servers are used. Google’s network is used to manage one company’s various sites, including the search engine, while The Planet, via Hostgator, manages millions of sites on a shared hosting platform. Likewise, many companies that specialize in dedicated hosting, such as Peer1, will have a nearly 1-to-1 ratio of server to sites while those like Hostgator will often have 1 to many thousand.

In short, all these numbers tell you is how many servers each company has in their datacenters and not what those computers are or how they are used. As such, while it is an interesting number, it may not be the best indicator as to what company you should use for your hosting.

Exception: Size = Some Security

The one thing that can definitely be said for hosts and datacenters that have a larger number of CPUs is that they can better cope with hardware failures. If a server or other piece of networking equipment dies, they are more likely to have the parts and staff on hand to do quick change outs and to route around any problems. This exactly why Google uses its approach and is the main benefit of larger datacenters.

However, as I mentioned before, if your Web host is not on this list, don’t worry, there is a very good chance that they lease their servers from one of these datacenters, or others of equal size, meaning they gain the benefit of having the larger datacenter but may offer some of the benefits of a smaller company as well.

If you have any questions about where a company hosts their servers, either look at their site or ask a sales representative.

Bottom Line

These numbers are interesting but not altogether that useful. The main thing they are good for is the awe factor of exactly how many servers these larger companies have under their control and also the sheer environmental impact of running all of these servers 24/7.

On that front, Green Web hosting may become more important over the next few years, as companies look to both mitigate the high costs of power consumption and the environmental impact.

But as a customer looking to buy hosting, these numbers are little more that a curiosity, something to known and be aware of, but not really base any decisions off of.

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