The drive to increase efficiency and scalability pushes innovation across all organizations. To extend and implement the latest and greatest in data centers, a number of initiatives have gained ground in recent years.
Perhaps the lead among these is the Open Compute Project (OCP), founded in 2011 as a non-profit organization to assist companies who develop and use data centers to share breakthroughs and make it simpler to design and deploy these advances.
As data growth increases, and groups, governments, and organizations derive ever-growing value from the data they generate and consume, data centers are no longer the backwaters of innovation they once were. It’s now imperative for companies to understand how to squeeze the most out of their existing storage hardware; how to manage the huge and ever more costly electricity and cooling requirements of data centers; and how to keep secure the hardware as well as the data that gets stored.
The OCP is an organization that invites contributors to design and build data center hardware that is ‘open source’—the hardware is open source and the specifications and subsequent know-how can be added to and modified by any other member. Its upcoming regional summit in Amsterdam (October 1-2, 2018) will showcase many of the latest updates to data center hardware, and will bring together EU-centric engineers, developers, hardware manufacturers, and other key decision makers.
Technology continues to accelerate, and we will face new challenges to lead the drive for open infrastructure for machine learning, virtual reality, autonomous vehicles and continued automation of the internet of
things — Mark Roenigk, president, OCP
“GRID TO GATES”
The OCP operates with the foundational philosophy of “grid to gates.” This is a highly modular approach, looking at everything from the power grids that serve data centers, to the transistor logic gates that make up the computing chips on the motherboards of the computers in the data centers. This inherent modularity is important, because it means that there can be a step-by-step process for companies to adopt the OCP format. There’s not necessarily a wholesale, costly changeover to OCP; it can be accomplished in stages.
The Open Compute Project is an industry leader in the push for open standards in the data center.
OCP has an interesting, community-focused history. In 2011, Facebook was designing a new data center in Palo Alto, CA, the company’s headquarters, from scratch. That included servers, racks, motherboards, power supplies, battery backup systems, and methods for cooling and powering the center.
Once the designs were completed, Facebook deployed the designs in a new data center in Prineville in central Oregon. Facebook then published the hardware specifications, as well as the electrical and construction specifications, for anyone to see, comment on, and improve. Those specifications are the basis for the OCP.
Stephen Buckler, chief operating officer of Horizon Technology, says the work of the OCP is important not only in driving up efficiency and common hardware standards but in reducing costs and promoting sustainability across data centers.
“The purpose of the OCP is to get away from legacy proprietary black box solutions to an open standard that offers efficiency, environmentally friendly, scalable and cost-effective solutions that promote the growth of cloud computing,” Buckler remarked.
“The use of generic components not only drives down cost but offers flexibility in making changes as necessary within a data center as well as contributing the reuse of components; both driving down costs further and a positive for the environment.”
OPEN SOURCING THE FUTURE
While the Open Compute Project focuses on hardware and infrastructure, it isn’t the only open source group developing specifications for computing .
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation is an open source foundation that focuses on software that makes cloud computing ‘universal and sustainable.’ Like OCP, CNCF is vendor neutral.
The CNCF focuses on open source development for software in cloud computing.
Meanwhile, the Open 19 Foundation, formed by LinkedIn, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, and VaporIO, defines a common hardware form factor to be deployed by any manufacturer of hardware cages, power shelves, and network switches. By its nature, this foundation is narrower in emphasis than the OCP, as it considers only server racks.
The approach to licensing in the open source movement is key. Take OCP base servers: these are generally no different from servers designed and manufactured by the major OEMs such as HPE, Cisco, and Lenovo, with the components and processors usually coming from the same ODMs that supply the OEMs in the first place. The cost savings, flexibility and scalability arise from the absence of OEM licensing costs pertaining to hardware/firmware features on a motherboard or hard disk drive, for example.
“Open Compute Project allows anyone to look at, use, or modify the designs of hugely expensive, high performance computers that big companies use to run their operations — all for free,” said Mark Kier, director of business development at Horizon.
“They have contract manufacturers that are standing by to build custom designs, in bulk, and have standard designs agreed upon by the group. It also allows hardware designers and builders to collaborate instead of being forbidden to share trade secrets.”
Experts believe the convergence of industry players around open source standards, not only in the data center but in related data-driven fields such as medical research, will play a defining role in the ongoing drive for technological advance.
“The purpose of the OCP is to get away from legacy proprietary black box solutions to an open standard that offers efficiency, environmentally friendly, scalable and cost-effective solutions that promote the growth of cloud computing.” – Stephen Buckler
