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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.
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.