Open Compute Project: Facebook Plans for the Hardware Industry
By David Tobia
August 15, 2012
August 15, 2012
- Facebook has introduced the Open Compute Project, an open-source endeavor aimed to “do for commercial hardware what Linux did for commercial software — change the way it is designed, built, sold and supported,” reports Business Insider.
- Rather than purchasing hardware from Dell or HP, Facebook now custom designs hardware for its needs. Facebook then posts the designs on GitHub for anyone to use or modify.
- Facebook director of hardware design and supply chain Frank Frankovsky heads the Open Compute Project.
- Frankovsky explains how after the team “built its first data center in Prinevill, Oregon, which opened in April, 2011, they saw that it was 38 percent less expensive to operate, gave them a ’24 percent capex savings advantage’ compared to buying gear from typical vendors and that their data centers consumed a lot less electricity, too.”
- Frankovsky believes the hardware his team builds helps eliminate waste, as HP and Dell servers typically have “this beautiful plastic bevel on the front that allows them to put logo on the front. That plastic not only impedes the air flow, which causes the fans to work harder to cool the servers, but when you are deploying servers by the 10’s of thousands, that’s a lot of wasted material that is someday going to be decommissioned and put into the waste stream.”
- Frankovsky also explains that his servers are easier to repair. He reports that some technicians can repair his servers eight times more quickly than they can a typical server.
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