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Why Open Compute Is a Win For Rackspace
1sockchuck writes "Cloud provider Rackspace is looking to the emerging open source hardware ecosystem to transform its data centers. The cloud provider spends $200 million a year on servers and storage, and sees the Open Compute Project as the key to reducing its costs on hardware design and operations. Rackspace is keen on the potential of the new Open Rack program, and its buying power is motivating HP and Dell to develop for the new standard — partly because Rackspace has also been talking with original design manufacturers like Quantra and Wistron. It's an early look at how open source hardware could have a virtuous impact on the server economy. 'I think the OEMs were not very interested (in Open Compute) initially,' said Rackspace COO Mark Roenigk. 'But in the last six months they have become really focused.'"
Open source hardware? Not so much. Trying to attach to / modify a buzz word to lift the share price a couple of bucks.
So... is there anything more to your content free argument or is that it?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Open source hardware totally makes sense in the hobbyist world. Its going like gangbusters at places like Adafruit, Sparkfun, etc.
Remains to be seen how well it works at the big corporate level, but I could see real benefit to putting an end to duplicative squandering of R&D resources by a hundred different companies on same, but different, designs for motherboards, power supplies, routers, etc.
I kind of doubt its going to help Cisco, HP or Dell though. Its just going to further commoditize hardware and cut profit margins. Once you have solid designs big data centers like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Rackspace will, if they haven't already, farm out the manufacturing to lowest bidder in China and cut out the middlemen which would be HP and Dell.
I really don't see what value HP and Dell add to anything at this point and their stock prices seem to concur. Microsoft and Linux own the software, and hardware just isn't a place to differentiate much any more except on the very high end. Apple was smart enough to hold on to the software, hardware and ecosystem and they are reaping huge profits as a result.
HP is especially sad. Apotheker knew their hardware business was going no where but down, his board apparently completely supported him in spinning it off, if it wasn't the boards idea in the first place. Leo announced it, stock tanked, media and social networks skewered them, and the board scapegoated Leo and claimed it was all his fault. Sad.
Another plus with open hardware, coupled with open software, is it might slow down the NSA, FBI and/or Huawei from backdooring all our computing and network infrastructure.
@de_machina
Open source hardware? Not so much. Trying to attach to / modify a buzz word to lift the share price a couple of bucks.
So... is there anything more to your content free argument or is that it?
Open source hardware? Not so much. Trying to attach to / modify a buzz word to lift the share price a couple of bucks.
So... is there anything more to your content free argument or is that it?
Excuse me, but that was not off topic. People posting random FUD, typically with some agenda, have to be called out.
And for the record, my opinion is that open source hardware is just as valid as open source software, however the entrenched interests lined up against it are powerful and determined to undermine it. Even to the extent of trolling social sites like Slashdot.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Remains to be seen how well it works at the big corporate leve
That does not remain to be seen, it already has been seen to work well in many cases. Here is just one of many credible links to substantiate that.
It is no longer a question of "if" but "how much". The only reason open source hardware is not exploding at the same rate as open source software is, the toolchains are more effectively locked down. That is partly because the open source software community has not fully focused on the problem yet, and partly because of arguably illegal barriers to entry erected by toolchain vendors. But of course, tearing those down is part of the fun.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
It's about time old Wintel toady HP went down. HP needs to abandon its half baked delusions of conglomerate grandeur and get back to printers. And how about with ink not subject to DRM this time. I bought my last printer from Brother for that reason alone.
Dell... they should *be* the lowest bidder in China, if they can't figure out how to do that it's goodbye Dell. Another old Wintel toady who every 2 or 3 years waves the Linux flag just enough to sweeten their next secret deal with Microsoft.
Open source can't save these orgs, they have their heads too far up their proverbial butts.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Obvious benefit. Where do I buy opencompute servers from? Does anyone sell them yet? I'm outfitting a dc server cabinet in the near future.
They have some really good ideas for rack/server design - eg they reckon they are getting 34% power saving by supplying 12V DC to buses in the racks so servers don't need individual power supplies and with improved cooling paths.
Manufacturers won't standardise unless they are pushed like rackspace is doing. This is a big advance.
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
Why is it so many open source projects sound like names for run down strip clubs?
Monstar L
Actually they totally are boxes in a rack when you are talking purely about the hardware. Its reaching the point it is easier to swap it out than fix it unless its something easy to fix like a power supply, RAM or a disk. The companies with big data centers can field their own hardware and software people and probably get better service than A) paying Dell or HP and arm and a leg for support B) waiting for Dell or HP to send someone or or ship boxes back and forth.
I think one of the points of open computing is all the big centers are using the same hardware and the same drivers so they are sharing the burden of debugging the hardware and getting working drivers which are probably the biggest support burdens. Its almost got to be better to get rid of all the fragmentation in hardware designs and drivers and have everyone focus on a few of each and make them work really well. Hopefully open computing wont fragment as badly as Linux distributions and desktops have.
If it fragments then, no I dont really see the point to it.
@de_machina
The rack frame itself is 24 inches in width, but, for some stupid reason, the rack was confined to 19 inches
Plus, all the components, like HD, mobo, and so on, had to had their own PSU
Air flow was seriously constricted, and heat built up
Now that they change the spec to 21 inches, and leave the power supply to the frame, just like what they were doing in the blade servers, much improvement will be had in this new design
As for the entrenched interest - HP and Dell are the two biggest OEM, and if they do not want to play, well, the Taiwanese ODMs will be more than happy to move in and fill the gap
And do not discount the biggest elephant in the room, Foxconn - if Foxconn decides to join in the game, the whole scene will change drastically
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Good luck supporting it like HP, Dell or Cisco does.
This.
A number of years ago I was involved in supporting some hardware in a ski resort a few hours outside of Denver. One snowy night a piece of gear failed and the service contract said 'replace it in three hours.' Sure enough, 2.5 hours later headlights appeared on the snowy road as the tech showed up with the replacement part, which he installed.
supporting some hardware
OCP isn't about supporting some hardware. It's about building servers when you already have 24/7 hardware support and all of the parts on site already, and own the software stack so there's no value add there.
If you're not in the space where you do everything yourself already, then OCP isn't for you.
--
$tar -xvf
Heck, I'd love to see HP go back to its real roots as an engineering driven firm. They got their start building the most rock solid test equipment on the planet, and they did it for a reasonable price, after all. Whatever happened to that kind of thinking?
It got MBAed.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
And for the record, my opinion is that open source hardware is just as valid as open source software, however the entrenched interests lined up against it are powerful and determined to undermine it.
"Open source hardware" seems to mean "hardware standard not generated by a recognized professional organization." That is, the "closed source" hardware rack is an EIA standard from the 50s, not the kind of detailed drawing you could take to a local machine shop and say "give me 2 of these." Those industry groups have built-in bureaucracy and provide confidence that the next standard revision will be a small revision and completely compatible with all the preceding generations. I can buy rack mountable hardware today, and be extremely confident that it will plug into the rack I got in 1970. Standards produced by professional organizations like EIA, IEEE, and NEMA also have built-in credibility and implicit support of multiple industrial concerns. Of course, the bureaucracy and review means that they can be somewhat slow to accommodate changing demands, but that's kind of the point. "Open source" standards may be developed by professionals with support from multiple industry groups, too, but they may also be a bunch of high school kids in their parents' garage, and therefore require more review by whomever is going to use them. Especially if that user is considering building out a $100,000,000 production line. In either case, you still have your own manufacturing design work to do: the "open source" guidelines don't add any value.
Open source software, on the other hand, is a thing you can use directly, and (to the extent that it works) saves development time. For any sizeable project, it's easier to fix problems than to generate from scratch (unless its really bad), so open source software brings value
That said, a lot of professional organizations seem to use their standards as money-makers. The NEMA standard for welding electrode holders is $50. The ANSI standard for electrical meters is $150. The standards are developed at the cost of the member organizations, and I don't think royalties are paid to those organizations (who are generally the people paying the fees, anyway). It would be nice to see those organizations move toward zero cost electronic distribution of their standards, at least for individual use. One imagines that, as "O/S" hardware designs prove themselves, that they will get industry buy-in, and will get incorporated into formally blessed standards.