Facebook Open Computer Project and Open Data Center Alliance announced a partnership at Intel Developer Forum.
INTEL DEVELOPER FORUM, San Francisco, Sept. 13, 2011 – The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) today announced a collaboration with the Open Compute Project (OCP) on system and data center specifications to drive adoption of efficient data center and infrastructure design; spur rapid hardware innovation; and encourage greater openness and industry collaboration.
When I received the press release I let the PR firm know I was at Intel Developer Forum (IDF), and I could talk to the ODCA executive. I received a call in 3 minutes and said they had a slot in 25 minutes. I went upstairs and there was ODCA Board of Director’s Chairman, Marvin Wheeler, and Frank Frankovsky, a founding member of the Open Compute Project and director of technical operations at Facebook.
It feels like I have a reoccurring meeting to run into Frank – OCP summit in Palo Alto, GigaOm Structure in SF, IDF in SF, and OCP in NYC. So, it was easy to quickly get down to what the partnership is delivering. If you look at ODCA models.
You may notice there is no server or data center models. As ODCA is focused on the cloud.
We envision an IT industry that gives both users and suppliers a simpler, more secure, more efficient path to cloud computing.
With many people thinking of private clouds as well as public clouds, it would make sense for there to be a reference point to compare public clouds vs. private clouds. Whose hardware would you use to build a private cloud that is willing to open source its designs? This is where Facebook’s Open Compute Project fills a need, grounding the cloud to the reality of implementation on server hardware in a real data center.
Everyone has full access to these specifications. We want you to tell us where we didn’t get it right and suggest how we could improve. And opening the technology means the community will make advances that we wouldn’t have discovered if we had kept it secret.
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Server Technology
Open Compute servers are designed to be efficient, inexpensive and easy to service. They’re also vanity free, with no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers.
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Data Center Technology
Designed in tandem with our servers, the data center maximizes mechanical performance and thermal and electrical efficiency. It accepts 277 volts of AC, so more energy makes it from the grid to the data center to server components.
Both OCP and ODCA have an end user focused leadership and take an open source approach which makes for a natural partnership between the organizations. ODCA will present at the OCP event in NYC.
Members of both organizations are engaging in joint projects initially focused on rack-scale infrastructure; ultra-efficient server and storage designs; and scalable, open systems management. Additional details on these projects will be announced at the OCP Summit on October 27.