Open Compute Project
The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products among companies, including Facebook, , , , , , , , , , , , , , and .
The Open Compute Project’s mission is to design and enable the delivery of the most efficient server, storage and data center hardware designs for scalable computing. “We believe that openly sharing ideas, specifications and other intellectual property is the key to maximizing innovation and reducing operational complexity in the scalable computing space.”
All Facebook data centers are 100% OCP.
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Details
The initiative was announced in April 2011 by Jonathan Heiliger at Facebook to openly share designs of data center products. The effort came out of a redesign of Facebook’s data center in . After two years, with regards to a more modular server design, it was admitted that “the new design is still a long way from live data centers”. However, some aspects published were used in the Prineville center to improve energy efficiency, as measured by the index defined by .
The Open Compute Project Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit incorporated in the state of Delaware. Corey Bell serves as the Foundation’s CEO. Currently there are 7 members who serve on the board of directors which is made up of two individual members and five organizational members. Jason Taylor (Facebook) is the Foundation’s president and chairman. Frank Frankovsky (formerly of Facebook and past president and chairman) and are the two individual members. In addition to Jason Taylor who represents Facebook, other organizations on the Open Compute board of directors include (Jason Waxman), (Don Duet), (Mark Roenick), and (Bill Laing).
On March 11, 2015, , and joined the project.
On November 16, 2015, joined the project.
On February 23, 2016, joined the project.
On March 9, 2016, joined the project.
Components of the Open Compute Project include:
- Server compute node designs included one for processors and one for processors. In 2013, contributed a design with processors.
Several generations of server designs have been deployed: Freedom (Intel), Spitfire (AMD), Windmill (Intel E5-2600), Watermark (AMD), Winterfell (Intel E5-2600 v2) and Leopard (Intel E5-2600 v3)
- Open Vault storage building blocks offer high disk densities, with 30 drives in a 2U Open Rack chassis designed for easy replacement. The 3.5 inch disks are stored in two drawers, five across and three deep in each drawer, with connections via . This storage is also called Knox, and there is also a cold storage variant where idle disks power down to reduce energy consumption. Another design concept was contributed by Hyve Solutions, a division of in 2012.<br />At the OCP Summit 2016 Facebook together with Taiwanese ODM Wistron’s spin-off Wiwynn introduced Lightning, a flexible NVMe JBOF (just a bunch of flash), based on the existing Open Vault (Knox) design.
- Mechanical mounting system: Open racks have the same outside width (600 mm) and depth as standard , but are designed to mount wider chassis with a 537 mm width (about 21 inches). This allows more equipment to fit in the same volume and improves air flow. Compute chassis sizes are defined in multiples of an OpenU, which is 48 mm, slightly larger than the typical .
- Data center designs for energy efficiency, include 277 VAC power distribution that eliminates one transformer stage in typical data centers. A single voltage (12.5 VDC) power supply designed to work with 277 VAC input and 48 VDC battery backup. The plan was to allow Facebook to load its own software onto the switch. Press reports predicted that more expensive and higher-performance switches would continue to be popular, while less expensive products treated more like a (using the “top-of-rack”) might adopt the proposal.<br />A similar project for a custom switch for the had been rumored, and evolved to use the protocol.<br />The first switch open-sourced by Facebook was designed together with Taiwanese ODM Accton using Broadcom Trident II chip and is called Wedge, the Linux OS that it runs is called FBOSS. Later switch contributions include “6-pack” and Wedge-100, based on Broadcom Tomahawk chips. Similar switch hardware designs have been contributed by: (Accton spin-off), Mellanox Technologies, Interface Masters Technologies, Agema Systems. Capable of running ONIE-compatible operating systems such as , Big Switch or .
Litigation
In March, 2015, BladeRoom Group Limited and Bripco (UK) Limited sued Facebook, Emerson Electric Co. and others alleging that Facebook has disclosed BladeRoom and Bripco’s trade secrets for prefabricated data centers in the Open Compute Project. Facebook petitioned for the lawsuit to be dismissed, but this was rejected in 2017.
Providers
The promoted vendors include:
- Circle B
- (CTC)
- Hyperscale IT
- Racklive
- Stack Velocity
- Wiwynn
See Also on BitcoinWiki
- – Facebook sister project focusing on and open