[Discuss] Open Compute Hardware

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Anyone investigated, purchased, or built Open Compute hardware?

Articles about Facebook's openly documented server hardware have been
trickling out over the past year or so. Here's another:

Facebook now designs all its own servers
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/02/who-needs-hp-and-dell-facebook-now-designs-all-its-own-servers/

  Nearly two years ago, Facebook unveiled what it called the Open
  Compute Project. The idea was to share designs for data center
  hardware like servers, storage, and racks so that companies could
  build their own equipment instead of relying on the narrow options
  provided by hardware vendors.
  [...]
  Like Google, Facebook designs its own servers and has them built by
  ODMs (original design manufacturers) in Taiwan and China, rather than
  OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) like HP or Dell. By rolling
  its own, Facebook eliminates what Frankovsky calls "gratuitous
  differentiation," hardware features that make servers unique but do
  not benefit Facebook.

  It could be as simple as the plastic bezel on a server with a brand
  logo, because that extra bit of material forces the fans to work
  harder. Frankovsky said a study showed a standard 1U-sized OEM server
  "used 28 watts of fan power to pull air through the impedance caused
  by that plastic bezel," whereas the equivalent Open Compute server
  used just three watts for that purpose.
  [...]
  HP and Dell have begun making designs that conform to Open Compute
  specifications...
  [...]
  Facebook says it gets 24 percent financial savings from having a
  lower-cost infrastructure, and it saves 38 percent in ongoing
  operational costs as a result of building its own stuff. Facebook's
  custom-designed servers don't run different workloads than any other
  server might--they just run them more efficiently.
  [...]
  Facebook's new "Group Hug" specification for motherboards, which could
  accommodate processors from numerous vendors. AMD and Intel, as well
  as ARM chip vendors Applied Micro and Calxeda, have already pledged to
  support these boards with new SoC (System on Chip) products. ...a
  future in which customers can "upgrade through multiple generations of
  processors without having to replace the motherboards or the in-rack
  networking,"...

  Calxeda came up with an ARM-based server board that can slide into
  Facebook's Open Vault storage system, codenamed "Knox." "It turns the
  storage device into a storage server and eliminates the need for a
  separate server to control the hard drive,"...
  [...]
  Fidelity and Goldman Sachs are among those using custom designs tuned
  to their workloads as a result of Open Compute. Smaller customers
  might be able to benefit too, even if they rent space from a data
  center where they can't change the server or rack design, he said.
  They could "take building blocks [of Open Compute] and restructure
  them into physical designs that fit into their server slots,"
  Frankovsky said.



 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/