Cost estimation of hosting Google Maps

In this article, we have done the calculations for Cost estimation of hosting Google Maps. The one-time cost of buying hardware for Google Maps is $2.2B while the running cost of hosting for 1 year will be $380M.

Table of contents:

  1. Hosting Google Maps on Amazon S3
  2. Host Google Maps on own Hardware

Hosting Google Maps on Amazon S3

In this section, we will estimate the cost of hosting such an application. This can be done by using hosting services like AWS, Azure, etc. or by buying our own hardware and managing it.

We can utilize AWS S3 as a cloud service. According to this estimate, keeping 1500PB of data on a server will cost around $408,342,336 or roughly 408 million USD per year. (according to Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator).

  • $408M per year to store data of Google Maps in Amazon S3

Host Google Maps on own Hardware

When the S3 storage exceeds 200TB, it's no longer cost effective to use S3 instead of developing our own private cloud solution. Also, just because our storage is on AWS doesn't mean it doesn't need to be managed; we will still have to deal with all of the same storage issues we'd have on any other platform, except the hardware replacement. It's still up to us to manage security, access, and integration.

To get an idea of how much it would cost to create a 16EB storage cluster in formatted capacity, we would require 1,257,269 14TB hard drives. At $USD 500 per drive, it adds up to $628,634,500 in drives alone. Then we'd need a means to connect them all into a cluster. We could use the Storinator XL60 storage pod, which has room for 60 3.5" hard drives which costs $10,386 and we require 20,955 of them.

  • $628M one-time cost for storage

Add in networking equipment (we need to be able to communicate with all of our servers), floor space (a rack with Storinator XL60s takes up about 0.5 square meters, and a rack could hold up to 11 XL60s if it could handle the weight), cooling (we need to keep those drives and servers cool), and power (all those drives at 4.5W idle would use up roughly 8.28MWh per day if they remained idle all day).

In USA, cost of electricity is $0.104 per 1KWh. So, the daily cost will be $861 which amounts to $26,000 per month for electricity.

If we were constructing a 16EB storage cluster, we would want to include redundancy so that if drives failed, we would not lose our data. This will raise our construction prices somewhat but will save us a lot of trouble in the long run. I'd say our construction expenses will be at least $1.5 billion, if not more.

  • Construction cost $1.5B one-time

For the processing, there are at least 2M active users at a given time. Given that a system has 256 threads (may be 64 or 128 cores), we need 8000 servers. Each system will cost $600 on average. This brings the server cost to $4.8M (one-time).

The running cost of electricity will be $10,000 per month.

24/7 Air conditioning of the entire construction is a must as the heat generated by the systems need to be controlled. This will bring the electricity cost of $40,000. The cost of Air conditions are included in construction cost.

Total monthly electricity cost: $(26K + 10K + 40K) = $76,000

Assuming 5% of hardware needs replacement every month, this will bring the monthly maintanence cost to: 0.05 x (4.8M + 628M) = $31.6M

Therefore, total monthly cost will be $31.7M.

One-time cost of building the system for Google Maps will be $(1.5B + 0.628B) = $2.2B.

Therefore, the total cost of hosting Google Maps for 1 year will be: $2.6B.

With this article at OpenGenus, you know the cost of hosting Google Maps.