How Big is Really Facebook?

Facebook is a web site with its own vast infrastructure. The number of users dictates unprecedented scaling for hosting all data, especially pictures, videos, etc.. One single user has data spread across hundreds of their servers. But how big really is?

"Windmill, open sourced in 2012: The Server V2 design, also known as “Windmill,” was a power-optimized, bare-bones motherboard for Intel Xeon processors designed to provide lowest capital and operating costs. It did away with many features that vendors usually include in servers but that aren’t necessary for Facebook’s needs."

"It’s unclear what that number [of servers] is today, but it’s bound to be in the hundreds of thousands. In its most recent annual SEC filing, Facebook reported that it owned about $3.63 billion in “network equipment” as of the end of 2015 — up from $3.02 billion in 2014."

"As Facebook grows, its data center requirements are growing along with it. The data center Oregon was announced as being 147,000 square feet. But as construction got rolling, the company announced plans to add a second phase to the project, which added another 160,000 square feet, bringing the total size of the campus to 307,000 square feet – larger than two Wal-Mart stores. Last year, Facebook secured permits to build another 487,000-square foot data center in Prineville."

"The social network has since expanded capacity in Prineville and built data centers in Forest City, North Carolina, Lulea, Sweden, and Altoona, Iowa. It has been expanding capacity in each of those locations continuously by building additional data center facilities. The company is also building data centers in Fort Worth, Texas, Clonee, Ireland, and Los Lunas, New Mexico."

"Facebook’s servers are powered by chips from both Intel and AMD, with custom-designed motherboards and chassis built by Quanta Computer of Taiwan and other original design manufacturers. It has also experimented with ARM-powered servers."

"Facebook was developed from the ground up using open source software. The site is written primarily in the PHP programming language and uses a MySQL database infrastructure. To accelerate the site, the Facebook Engineering team developed a program called HipHop to transform PHP source code into C++ and gain performance benefits."

https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/data-center-faqs/facebook-data-center-faq

Technician replacing one server in a rack:

https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+servers&source=lnms&tbm=isch#imgrc=5Eq4RCF45LOYxM:

If we divide let's say as of today 3 billion users to 300 thousands servers by 1 TB each we get something like 10 GB per user. Google right now gives you 15 GB free per account in which you can put lots of pictures and videos. I don't know, it's a lot of space and i don't see the average user needing so much.

https://www.google.com/search?q=3%2C000%2C000%2C000%2F300%2C000%2C000