Open source will be integrated into the data Center hardware development field

Open source concept is a great success in software development, so independent Industry Alliance: Open Compute Project is trying to apply the same idea to data center hardware development field. The organization is developing a set of hardware specifications and mechanical designs for motherboards, power supplies, server chassis and cabinets, and battery enclosures. This effort is expected to reduce server costs and simplify deployment for new large data centers.

An industry giant is supporting this open computing project. When Facebook first built one of the largest data centers in the world (the datacenter supports 1 billion users), it was in trouble to mix and match the server parts of different vendors.

John Abbott, founder and chief analyst at 451 Research LLC, an investigative agency, said: "The process of corporate IT consumption is so slow that some users are frustrated, especially those who are on the cutting edge of new social media cloud services, They want to be more firmly in control of their futures and future. Over the years, giants such as Google, Amazon, Yahoo and Facebook have largely bypassed traditional server vendors and built their own data centers while expanding their vast Internet data centers. ”

Facebook launched its open computing program in April 2011. Frank Frankovsky, vice president of the hardware design and supply chain at Facebook, also holds two positions as president and chairman of the Open Computing Project board. The company came up with some of its proprietary hardware specifications and then solicited feedback from hardware vendors and other large companies. The goal of the alliance is to reduce costs and improve efficiency for datacenter hardware by introducing open source concepts into hardware design. The organization believes its work will benefit many businesses, claiming that its methods of building data centers are 38% more efficient than typical data centers, and that construction and operating costs are 24% lower.

The organization is developing five specifications. The Open Rack specification establishes a new standard for rack design for large scale data center environments. Open Vault is the storage specification for open computing projects, and it uses a modular input/output topology. As for the power supply, the organization developed a 700-watt AC to DC power supply converter, a single voltage 12.5 kv DC power supply, using closed frame and auto cooling technology. Battery cabinet is a stand-alone cabinet, for a pair of three online cabinets to provide 48 volts DC standby power. The organization's hardware management specifications include a small batch of tools that allow technicians to remotely manage virtual machines.

Much of this work is at an early stage. In October 2011, the Open Computing project released the Development Rack 1.0 specification, which was the most comprehensive part of the organization's development. It provides the server rack with a clear distribution and cooling basic design. The guide provides a 21-inch-wide slot for the server, and widens 2 inches to a 19-inch wide slot that is the standard for data center hardware. The wider design is designed to allow more space to improve thermal management and provide a more reasonable connection for power and cabling. An important innovation revolves around power distribution; In this regard, the Organization has established a power supply rack to place the power supply instead of placing the power supply in the server bay. It is expected that the Open Rack 1.0 specification will be continuously refined to include additional features such as rack-level power supply capping and input/output on the backplane.

Since its inception, the Open Computing organization has shown other signs of progress. The alliance has held three summits, and members have discussed progress in setting standards. The group has won support from major vendors, including AMD, Asus, Dell, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat, Salesforce.com and VMware. However, open computing projects still face many challenges. Development specifications are only the first step in ensuring that products are compatible with each other. At present, no organization is brave enough to face the challenge of designing conformance test suites, so the ease with which companies will mix and match different vendors in the future is still unknown.

Some feel that Facebook is doing its part to create the alliance and is deeply concerned about the company's core role. AMD's cloud technology publicity officer and server platform architecture fellow Bob Ogrey said: "Open computing projects have been trying to develop and become more of a collective organization, not a company that has the final say. ”

However, the approach advocated by the Open Computing project is not compatible with all data centres. "The standard for open computing projects is to start a new data center from scratch to support new technologies like cloud computing," Ogrey said. While this is a great help for companies that create new data centers, it is not ideal for companies that are already costing large data centers. "In fact, the alliance has stripped away many of the management functions that companies are relying on to monitor data center devices." As a result, these enterprises may need to deploy new management tools and processes to use the products of open computing projects.

In response, new voices are pushing the project in different directions: Fidelity Investment Group (Fidelity Investments) and Goldman Sachs have been setting standards specifically for the financial services industry. As a result, there may be a series of inconsistent criteria for different types of companies, rather than a uniform set of specifications for all data centers.

Abbott said: "Look at the development of the Apache Software Foundation, in the end OCP (Open Computing project) will eventually become a series of related projects, the overall framework." "If this happens, manufacturers cannot get economies of scale that often come from open source projects," he said. The price of a product may be high, and the work carried out by the open Computing project may be recognized only on a small scale, not on a large scale.

Another potential limitation is that the organization's work is designed to mitigate problems that occur in mega-companies, but may be too complex for small and medium-sized companies to deploy. "The use of custom hardware has always required a large number of skills and expertise within the enterprise, which have traditionally been provided by vendors or channel partners," Abbott said. "At the moment, manufacturers or channels are powerless to provide such support.

In short, the Open computing project seems to be getting more and more popular. It may affect the design of new large data centers, but it is not yet clear whether their impact will spill over into other areas of the data center market.

(Responsible editor: Liu Fen)