Tag Archives: open compute

Cisco-threatening open switch coming from Facebook, Intel, and Broadcom

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The network project would similarly provide an alternative to vendors like Cisco, Arista Networks, and Dell’s Force 10 division. The Open Compute Project promises a “specification and a reference box for an open, OS-agnostic top-of-rack switch.” Whether that reference box will be based on an amalgam of submitted specifications or just one of them isn’t clear yet, and no release date has been set.

via Cisco-threatening open switch coming from Facebook, Intel, and Broadcom | Ars Technica.

In response to today’s Facebook announcement, Cisco said in a statement to Ars, “It’s important to acknowledge that the largest web-scale companies driving OCP have the skills, resources, and specialized traffic patterns that justify considering this approach carefully. However, most IT departments won’t relish taking on the additional operational cost, skills and expertise that are required to integrate their own technology.

How Facebook threatens HP, Cisco, and more with its “vanity free” servers

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Facebook, Amazon, and Google are all very picky about their server hardware, and these tech giants mostly build it themselves from commodity components. Frank Frankovsky, VP of hardware design and supply chain operations at Facebook, was instrumental in launching the Open Compute Project because he saw the waste in big cloud players reinventing things they could share. Frankovsky felt that bringing the open-source approach Facebook has followed for software to the hardware side could save the company and others millions—both in direct hardware costs and in maintenance and power costs.

via How Facebook threatens HP, Cisco, and more with its “vanity free” servers | Ars Technica.

The OCP hardware designs are “open” at a higher level. This way anyone can use standards-based components to create the motherboards, the chassis, the rack-mountings, the racks, and the other components that make up servers.

Open Compute to open source high-end network switches

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That said, many high-speed switches today use BSD Unix as their basis. While many say that the OCP is starting with a “clean sheet of paper”, the ultimate goal of the project seems to be to give datacenter administrators a “bare metal network switch”. I think it’s likely that BSD will lie at its heart. After all, why reinvent the wheel?

via Open Compute to open source high-end network switches | ZDNet.

Open Compute Project Driving Open-Source Hardware Development

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Facebook launched the Open Compute Project in April 2011 with the intention of sharing the designs of the social networking giant’s data center in Prineville, Oregon, as well as custom designs for servers, power supplies and UPS units. Since then, the project has been growing, adding new partners and introducing new technologies designed specifically for use in webscale data centers.

via Open Compute Project Driving Open-Source Hardware Development.

The Open Compute v2 machines were unveiled at the third Open Compute Summit in May. The new OCP v2 servers are double-stuffed machines that can fit two two-socket x86 servers, their power supplies, and fans into a 1.5U Open Computer chassis.

AMD and Intel have contributed motherboard designs used in OCP v1 and v2. The new motherboards stripped out many features found in traditional motherboards to optimize power and reduce costs.

How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace

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Rackspace is one of the fastest-growing cloud computing providers. The San Antonio company spent $202 million on servers and storage for customers over the past year, adding more than 12,000 servers in its data centers.

via How Open Compute is a Win for Rackspace » Data Center Knowledge.

To put this in perspective, Amazon EC2 has over 450,000 servers according to this article.

At the Open Compute Summit earlier this month in San Antonio, both Dell and HP showed off server hardware that will work with the new Open Rack design, which features 21-inch wide equipment slots rather than the traditional 19 inches. Roenigk says Open Rack will play a key role in Rackspace’s cloud computing infrastructure in its next-generation data center design.

 

Open Compute Project

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We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost. We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up – and then share these technologies as they evolve.

via Open Compute Project – Hacking Conventional Computing Infrastructure.

Open Compute Wants to Overhaul Data Center Racks

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The Open Rack design, which was unveiled today at the Open Compute Summit in San Antonio, also offers an innovative approach to power management. The design features busbars supplying 12-volt power to servers, eliminating the need for individual power supplies for each server. Open Rack also offers standard interfaces for mechanical and electrical components.

via Open Compute Wants to Overhaul Data Center Racks » Data Center Knowledge.