Facebook to share green datacentre design with competitors

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Facebook has announced it will share the design details of its new energy-efficient datacentre with competitors.

Inspired by open source software, the "Open Compute Project" will see Facebook publish technical specifications and mechanical CAD files for the centre's servers, power supplies, server racks and building design.

The social networking company claims it is trying to encourage industry-wide collaboration around best practices for datacentre and server technology.

"Facebook and our development partners have invested tens of millions of dollars over the past two years to build upon industry specifications to create the most efficient computing infrastructure possible," said Jonathan Heiliger, vice president of technical operations at Facebook.

"These advancements are good for Facebook, but we think they could benefit all companies. We think it's time to demystify the biggest capital expenses of an online business – the infrastructure."

The company said its new datacentre uses 38 per cent less energy to do the same work as its existing facilities, and it does this at 24 per cent less cost.

Facebook also used a "vanity-free design", where servers have no paint, logos, stickers or front panel.

This saves more than 120 tonnes of material from being manufactured compared with a typical datacentre, it said.

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