Around a year ago Facebook launched its open-source take on datacentres, the Open Compute Project. Now top vendors are joining the initiative--including HP, AMD, Fidelity, Quanta and VMware.
New Open Compute member AMD announces "Roadrunner," a set of new server motherboard specifications fitting "Open Rack" (the Open Compute hardware specification) infrastructure. The company says Roadrunner is optimised for the financial services industry, and is flexible and stripped down enough to fit a range of storage models.
HP and Dell also have server and storage designs fitting the Open Rack specification, and VMware's vSphere virtualisation platform runs on OpenRack-based hardware.
Meanwhile Facebook reveals "Knox"-- a storage prototype holding 30 HDDs in 2 separate trays fitting inside a Facebook-designed data centre rack. It carries a laptop-style "friction hinge" able to support over 360kg, allowing users to easily slide trays out of the rack before rotating a tray up or down for easy (and safe!) drive access.
Facebook's open approach to servers contrasts with companies like Amazon and Google, who tend to be secretive (to say the least) about their choices in hardware. Then again, the social network lacks those two giants' resources-- making the choice to go open-source a fairly sensible decision.
Go Open Compute
Go Facebook Opens Up Hardware World With Magic Hinge (Wired)
