Open Compute Project (OCP) is an initiative led by Facebook aimed at building an efficient computing infrastructure at the lowest possible cost
The origins of the project
The roots of the Open Compute Project trace back to 2009 when an exponential surge of people started using Facebook and its various services. The amount of data users were generating was stressing the server infrastructure. In an effort to alleviate this stress, Facebook engineers spent two years building an energy efficient data center in Prineville, Ore.
Facebook discovered new ways to use less electricity at the data center. As a result, the organization shared its designs with the public. It then occurred to Facebook’s Infrastructure Team Leader Jonathan Heiliger the company could open source all its hardware designs and thus, OCP was born.
Open sourcing its projects enabled Facebook to harness the intellectual power of multiple businesses. Companies began hopping on board the project’s four-tiered membership structure: platinum members like Goldman Sachs and Microsoft; gold level members like Agema and Big Switch; silver level members like Bank of America and Samsung; and the OCP community like AT&T and Toshiba.
Advantages of the project
Open Compute offers a wealth of advantages for data center managers, administrators and consultants. An aim of Open Compute is to make data hardware consistent in effort to boost efficiency and minimize humor error. Since vendors produce the same hardware from the same specs, members don’t have to stew over product discontinuation or collecting the correct parts.
Another benefit of Open Compute is savings. The project is made to slash operating expenses in comparison to conventional hardware by eliminating gratuitous equipment from data centers. Facebook’s Prineville Data Center, for instance, uses 38% less energy at 24% the cost in comparison to other data centers.
Furthermore, Open Compute enables scalability. An individual design can be tailored to support various applications, such as high-performance computing and storage server applications. Upgrades are cheaper and simpler since all the components do not have to be replaced. Moreover, OCP data center components can be re-deployed for various applications, which minimizes expenses anchored to application-specific systems.
A final asset of OCP touched on earlier concerns the nature of open source projects. Since open source projects are a group effort, the community leverages the talent of multiple organizations instead of one. Solutions to problems can be resolved quicker whenever a body of experts are focusing on the same issue.
The role of Open Compute for telecomm
Based on the success of previous efforts, the foundation launched the OCP Telco Project in 2016. According to the foundation’s website, the OCP Telco Project has three goals: communicating telco technical requirements effectively to the OCP community; strengthening the OCP ecosystem to address the deployment and operational needs of telcos; and bringing OCP innovations to telco data center infrastructure for increased cost-savings and agility.
Specifications and designs used at Facebook’s data center are available at http://opencompute.org/projects. The OCP foundation encourages constructive criticism and feedback on server technology, storage technology and data center technology. To learn how to get involved, watch the video below.
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