Facebook open sources low power server and datacentre designs

Company ditches off-the-shelf products in a move that will slash datacentre operating costs

Facebook has started the Open Compute Project (OCP), which will share new server and datacentre designs that are radically more efficient than current systems.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that as Facebook had grown, it had begun looking for better server and datacentre performance than it had been getting from current off-the-shelf products. For the last 18 months, engineers had been working on new designs that would fit large-scale computing needs.

"We want to share that knowledge with the industry and make server and datacentre design open," he said.

"We're trying to foster ecosystems for the development of business startups. It's really cool. We're not the only ones who need this hardware and by sharing there will be more demand for the stuff we need, which makes it cost effective."

Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook, said that central to its strategy was power usage effectiveness (PUE), which is the ratio of power spent on computing versus that used to run and cool the facility.

The ideal PUE was a rating of 1.0 - meaning 100 per cent of power went to computing - but typically datacentres operated at a PUE of 1.5. Facebook's new datacentre in Prineville, Oregon operated at a PUE of 1.07, which is a major improvement.

"A typical datacentre consumes about $1m per MW each year, so this design would cut the annual power budget for an average site from $10m to $6m," said Rackspace's chairman Graham Weston.

"We had developing our own intellectual property around this issue, but will be flushing that to go with this open source design, because we believe in open source."

Facebook open sources low power server and datacentre designs

Company ditches off-the-shelf products in a move that will slash datacentre operating costs

The Prineville datacentre uses no air conditioning, thanks in part to the local climate, and cuts power loss from the electricity substation to the server from 11-17 per cent to two per cent, by eliminating several transformer steps.

The new server designs are taller than traditional rack systems to promote better air flow and have large 60mm fans, which are more power efficient. The motherboard has had redundant components such as expansion slots reduced and uses a new voltage regulator that is 93 per cent efficient.

In addition, a new power supply has been developed that is capable of 94.5 per cent efficient. Overall, the new server designs are 38 per cent more efficient to run, while 24 per cent cheaper to build, Heiliger said.

They have also been designed to be easy to service and replace with the minimum of tools, using clips and plunger fixings instead of screws. The servers are not mounted on racks, but shelves, so they can be slid in and out, and come in units of three 42U columns containing 90 servers.

Dell was at the launch to show its support, saying that for large customers the new designs were clearly suitable for deployment. Both Intel and AMD motherboards are supported in the designs and Jason Waxman, general manager of Intel's server platforms group, praised the OCP.

"This work is admirable and beneficial to the industry," he said.

"It takes the notion that delivering value is not a zero sum game but sharing, and being part of that is really exciting; it forces us to think differently."

Full plans for the servers and datacentres are online and Heiliger said Facebook was actively looking for constructive criticism and advice on how to improve the designs.