Facebook to test first Open Compute racks

27.07.2012
Facebook has taken delivery of the first set of innovative server racks it helped design, technology that the company hopes other organizations with large data centers will adopt.

The prototype racks represent some of the first significant tangible gear from a year-old multicompany effort, called the , to drive down costs and improve data center hardware, namely by open sourcing the designs.

"I'm embarrassed to say but it was kind of emotional to see the Open Rack" units, said Frank Frankovsky, Facebook vice president of hardware design and founding board member of the Open Compute Project. "We had been working on Open Rack for a long while."

In April 2011, Facebook launched the Open Compute Project, the open-source software collaboration model to the world of data center hardware. With this project, buyers of data center equipment could collaborate to design products, or at least the specifications for products, that they would like to see. Vendors can then use these blueprints to build the equipment.

Motherboards, power supplies and electrical subsystems are among the equipment Open Compute is collaboratively designing. A number of manufacturers have signed on and volunteered engineer support, including Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices and Supermicro.