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LarryM99
It's fascinating to see the computer industry move back to centralized ...
GREAT-Terry
It is interesting that Google is going into social networking and Facebook is ...
Facebook opens data center, server designs
Rick Merritt
4/7/2011 2:31 PM EDT
Facebook claims its new data center in Prineville, Oregon, has a 1.07 power usage effectiveness rating, significantly better than the industry average of 1.4 to 1.6 PUE.
It gained an edge from several factors including eliminating three steps of power conversion. In addition, the company claims it created AMD and Intel motherboard designs with 22 percent fewer components, eliminating as much as six pounds from traditional designs.
The data center uses no air conditioning. Instead it has a novel method of cycling ambient cool air through the data center, using the air heated by computers to heat its offices or to exhaust outside.
At least two second tier data center operators joined the Facebook Open Compute Project—game developer Zynga and Rackspace which has developed open source software for cloud computing called OpenStack.
Lanham Napier--CEO of Rackspace Hosting, the services part of Rackspace--estimated the Facebook designs could shave $4 million off a $10 million annual power budget for some data centers. "The Rackspace team has visited and studied Facebook's next-generation data center, our engineers continue to collaborate, and we look forward to optimizing OpenStack for Open Compute," he said.
"The biggest impact of the Open Compute Project will be in emerging markets that are just starting to think about how to build their data centers," said Jason Waxman, a general manager in Intel's data center group.
A representative of the U.S. Department of Energy was also on hand at the Facebook event. He praised the effort and said the government hopes to use the specs in future procurements, but will have to rationalize the specs with own requirements, especially in areas such as security.
Facebook has reviewed the specs with the vendors it collaborated with to make sure the designs are free of any intellectual property rights. "Anyone can use this technology with no licensing fees," said a Facebook spokesman.
Facebook's server uses 22 percent fewer components than traditional designs.
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Luis Sanchez
4/7/2011 4:52 PM EDT
I wonder till which level is this open spec.? Does this all mean the hardware electrical schematics will be available for anyone to manufacture?
The approach seems very original. It's an unexpected news coming from a social networking giant. Looks like Facebook doesn't want to stay put but actually to expand in any direction possible. I'm with that! Will be interesting to see if the Facebook data centers become the standard within some years.
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pixies
4/7/2011 5:25 PM EDT
What is the advantage of a 277V power supply?
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joepaiii
4/7/2011 11:03 PM EDT
From article:
The Facebook design includes a data center that brings 480/277 VAC power direct to the server power supply, eliminating up to four power conversion steps that waste nine to fifteen percent of power.
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rick.merritt
4/7/2011 5:29 PM EDT
Yes, Facebook is making full schematics of the boards and power supplies available, even CAD drawings of the chassis and rack it designed. If they get others to buy these parts, raising volumes and lowering prices for Facebook, it will be worth it to them.
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KB3001
4/7/2011 6:12 PM EDT
Nice move, which would benefit Facebook and new entrants into the market. Remains to see if Microsoft and Google will follow suit.... doubt it. Eventually, the best design will win anyway.
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VincePG
4/8/2011 2:53 PM EDT
It's not clear yet whether Facebook is a viable competitive entity. Right now Facebook is still a profit-less, private venture, funded by the likes of Goldman Sachs. Does this relationship with GS suggest Facebook is some kind of massive ponzi scheme to bilk investors? I don't know, but having them drive hardware markets to a specific commodity standard is not necessarily a good idea for US engineers or US competitiveness, particularly when Microsoft and Google, who do make profits and really are in competitive markets, seem to have reservations. Beware of startup companies bearing gifts, regardless of their purported size. Bernie Madoff was really big too, until his ponzi scheme collapsed.
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selinz
4/8/2011 8:27 PM EDT
This move surprises and impresses me. I hadn't heard of any hardware effort at Facebook before this... They have become more intrenched into most people's daily lives than Google ever was. They are will positioned to profit. I accidentally click on more adverts in FB than on purpose Google..
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rick.merritt
4/10/2011 12:47 AM EDT
A Facebook spokesman sent me the following note late Friday: "an engineering blog post with a summary and some more details about the Open Compute server.
http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/inside-the-open-compute-project-server/10150144796738920
There will be another post on Monday covering the data center architecture and specifications."
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GREAT-Terry
4/12/2011 2:22 AM EDT
It is interesting that Google is going into social networking and Facebook is going into data center. When will we see next move of Apple that do something totally different? These 3 companies often give the public shocks and it seems only these 3 companies are dare to think wild.
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LarryM99
4/12/2011 1:08 PM EDT
It's fascinating to see the computer industry move back to centralized architectures after the great PC decentralization that started in the 1980's. Hopefully this is going to drive a new round of networking infrastructure buildout to provide the communications necessary to support this move.
Larry M.
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