Open Compute Project - Facebook Tutorial

The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products among companies, including Facebook, Intel, Nokia, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Ericsson, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Lenovo and Bank of America.

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: Prineville Data Center, Forest City Data Center, Altoona Data Center, Luleå Data Center (Sweden). Facebook Data Centers under construction: Fort Worth Data Center, Clonee Data Center (Ireland).

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 Prineville, Oregon. After two years, with regards to a more module 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 the energy efficiency, as measured by the power usage effectiveness index defined by The Green Grid.

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 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 Andy Bechtolsheim are the two individual members. In addition to Jason Taylor who represents Facebook, other organizations on the Open Compute board of directors include Intel (Jason Waxman), Goldman Sachs (Don Duet), Rackspace (Mark Roenick), and Microsoft (Bill Laing).

On March 11, 2015 Apple, Cisco and Juniper Networks joined the project.

On November 16, 2015 Nokia joined the project.

On February 23, 2016 Lenovo joined the project.

On March 9, 2016 Google joined the project.

Components of the Open Compute Project include:

• Server compute nodes included one for Intel processors and one for AMD processors. In 2013, Calxeda contributed a design with ARM architecture processors.
  Several generations of server designs have been deployed. So far being: 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 disk drive replacement. The 3.5 inch disks are stored in two drawers, five across and three deep in each drawer, with connections via serial attached SCSI. This storage is also called Knox, there is also a cold storage variant where the disks power down if not used to save energy consumption. Another design concept was contributed by Hyve Solutions, a division of Synnex in 2012.
  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 19-inch racks, 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 rack unit.
• 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.
• On May 8, 2013, an effort to define an open network switch was announced. The plan was to allow Facebook to load its own operating system 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 commodity (using the buzzword "top-of-rack") might adopt the proposal.
  A similar project for a custom switch for the Google platform had been rumored, and evolved to use the OpenFlow protocol.
  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: Edge-Core Networks Corporation (Accton spin-off), Mellanox Technologies, Interface Masters Technologies, Agema Systems. Capable of running ONIE compatible Operating Systems such as Cumulus Linux, Big Switch or Pica8.

Providers

The promoted vendors include:

• AMAX Information Technologies
• Circle B
• Itochu Techno-Solutions (CTC)
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• Hyperscale IT
• Hyve Solutions
• Penguin Computing
• Nokia
• Quanta Computer
• Racklive
• Stack Velocity
• Wiwynn