Open Compute Hardware Makes Its Way Into Colo Data Centers (datacenterfrontier.com)

1sockchuck writes: As the Open Compute Project turns five, it is growing beyond its roots in hyperscale data centers. The path to a larger market ran through a Rackspace data center in northern Virginia, where the open source servers and racks- which were originally developed at Facebook — were adapted for use in a commercial data center with traditional power distribution. Rackspace, which is using Open Compute servers to power its managed cloud platform, worked closely with OCP vendors like Quanta, Wistron, Delta and Cloudline (HPE/FoxConn) to develop racks and servers that could be productized so other companies can use open hardware in colocation environments. The Open Compute Project will discuss its progress next week at its annual summit in San Jose.

Comments

energy update; too much is not enough...?

[Anonymous Coward]

who has this much power? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpS2N_9fHiA ,, no shame in hiding?

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Productized????

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ. That's not a fucking word.

Re:Productized????

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus christ. That's not a fucking word.

You are obviously not a Marketing major...

Bunch of manager-speak?

[guruevi]

So I'm interested in buying something "open". This is the description of the 'rack':

The Open Rack is the first rack standard that’s designed for data centers, integrating the rack into the data center infrastructure, part of the Open Compute Project’s “grid to gates” philosophy, a holistic design process that considers the interdependence of everything from the power grid to the gates in the chips on each motherboard.

What does this group do exactly? All I can see is that they're peddling Intel or AMD hardware (which isn't Open) in non-standard form factors.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does this group do exactly? All I can see is that they're peddling Intel or AMD hardware (which isn't Open) in non-standard form factors.

They publish open specifications for new vendor-independent form-factors for data center hardware. The technical specifications and CAD drawings for their designs are freely downloadable.

* Open Compute servers are designed to be efficient, inexpensive and easy to service. They’re also vanity free, with no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers.
* Designed in tandem with our servers, the data center maximizes mechanical performance and thermal and electrical efficiency. It accepts 277 volts of AC, so more energy makes it from the grid to the data center to server components.

Hypothetically you could originally buy a rack of open compute servers from HP, but get replacement parts (even e.g. motherboards and powersupplies) from Dell.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[swb]

So is anyone actually selling these inexpensive computers?

If you look up the open compute project in Wikipedia and look at the OCP solution providers, none of them lists any pricing for OCP hardware, just "consult with us for a quote" buttons (at best).

Maybe they are cheaper if you're buying a floor's worth of racks, but it's hard to see how they would be much cheaper than SuperMicro cases and standard motherboards at quantities below that, or necessarily even cheaper than low-budget Dell systems.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they are cheaper if you're buying a floor's worth of racks

That is pretty much OCP's target market; if you're smaller than Google/Facebook/Amazon, it's not for you.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[i.r.id10t]

And not being on the "in the server room all the time" end of things, I thought racks were a pretty standard size and rack mount items were described by height factor (1u, 3u, etc) since length and width were determined?

Re: Bunch of manager-speak?

[guruevi]

Racks have been fairly standard size for the last half a century originating from Ma Bells standardized telephone equipment. Originally 23 (or somewhere around that) 19" came later due to miniaturization of components. Even 19" is too big these days when you can fit 2 units and their power supplies in 1U 19". Not sure why they're going bigger again especially towards the future, it seems to me this is just a consortium of the most expensive manufacturers (HP, Amax) that want to maintain a market in competition with SuperMicro and others that are powering the modern data centers.

Their premise is incorrect however, you need to be able to mass manufacture your solution to be viable. Backblaze is the perfect example - a product that only works in specific circumstances (usually not yours) and due to the low production numbers, way more expensive than buying a simple SuperMicro box with better hardware.

I'm sure there are data centers and companies that need to design hardware around their workforce and their software but unless you maintain a single product across multiple continents, it's pretty pointless.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[n17ikh]

You can find dumps of the last generation of open compute stuff on eBay.

Re:Bunch of manager-speak?

[tlhIngan]

So is anyone actually selling these inexpensive computers?

If you look up the open compute project in Wikipedia and look at the OCP solution providers, none of them lists any pricing for OCP hardware, just "consult with us for a quote" buttons (at best).

Maybe they are cheaper if you're buying a floor's worth of racks, but it's hard to see how they would be much cheaper than SuperMicro cases and standard motherboards at quantities below that, or necessarily even cheaper than low-budget Dell systems.

Well, this is really for Google- or Facebook- or other sized data centers where density and efficiency are key. If you're not planning on outfitting an entire data center, then OCP isn't really for you - if you're just going to be a colo or renting colo space, a "standard" rackmount will be cheaper and more standard in industry.

Hence why it's all "call for quote" - they're not going to sell you one server, or even a rack of servers - they're wanting to deal with 10s of racks at a minimum. You're also going to want to engineer your datacenter for these racks - power, cooling and other demands are likely to be quite different from the standard rackmounts.

Rackspace was founded by a hate group!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was founded by three students at Trinity University which is a Presbyterian college. They are so full of hate. So full of hate.

They desire minorities and nonxians to die. That is their stated goals. We shouldn't support anything their kind supports. Everything their kind does is driven by hate.

All I know...

[Anonymous Coward]

... is that their spec is 21" wide, nicely between the already-existing 19" and 23" (yes, that is a thing) standards, and that by reinventing the wheel backwardly, they missed a good chance to go metric. So it's just another stupid trick from teh zuck that may well do whatever it was ment to do (something with politics vs. vendors) but that isn't half as good as it could be, perhaps not as it should be. So why someone outside of facebook would buy into this boondoggle? You tell me.