Facebook has bells ringing, when one notes about it building common standards for efficient hardware in the data center. This can be noted as Facebook launched the Open Compute Foundation (OCF), on Thursday. OCF is an industry association that aims to reduce the cost and environmental impact of the computers that run great swaths of the Internet. Those, following the social networking giant, would know that the company had started making a number of efforts for the same in April, with it starting the Open Compute Project (OCP).
In creating the OCP, the social networking site “open sourced” its designs for a new data center, which marks its massive social networking service. However, OCF would be working on the same lines, hoping to encourage other Internet icons to do much the same. The aim here is to have everything published from the layout of server motherboards to the design of the warehouse-like buildings, which cool the servers as well as house it.
Talking about the Open Compute members, it has a number of known companies such as Intel, Dell, ASUS, Red Hat, Mozilla, Rackspace, NTT Data, and Netflix, along with Facebook. On the other hand, member organizations have a few corporations making servers, software, networking equipment and power and cooling equipment. Here one would even see the inclusion of companies that build and operate web-scale data centers.
Frank Frankovsky, Director of Hardware Design and Supply Chain at Facebook and the face of the Open Compute Foundation said that OCF is in talks with the Open Data Center Association (ODCA), the user group for big data center operators founded by Intel. They intend to include inputs from the hardware specification working group of ODCA.
However, Jason Waxman, general manager of High-Density Computing in Intel’s Data Center Group said that Open Compute’s mission fills an urgent need. He even noted that the expectations would see the growth rate of server deployments doubling in the next five years. He was precise in his thoughts as he said that it would take “the equivalent of 45 coal power plants…just to keep up with that growth.”
The growth is definitely getting a boost and the same can be understood with the case of Amazon Web Services. The daily increase in the server capacity of Amazon currently, is equal to its entire capacity in 2000. James Hamilton, an Amazon vice president and resident data center guru said that during that phase, Amazon was in business for five years and pulled in $2.76 billion. He continued saying, “That weighing point between being wildly successful and helping customers and being a tax on the company and not helping customers — the only difference is in the infrastructure.”
In a related development, it was noted that the social media giant noting its plans to build a massive data center just outside the Arctic Circle in the Swedish town of Lulea. It would be an intelligent move as the location would have plenty of cold air, which would keep the servers cool and would provide them with abundant hydroelectric power. It would even meet with the most of the facility’s energy needs.