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Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

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Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#41

Post by acd »

acd wrote: post #12

Could ocp make a rack that behaves like a blade server? Construct a server rack that works like a network Patch panel and server power bus? Thus one would just install the server in the rack slot, no more Cables to the server. Bonus award if a robot could slide in the server in the rack.

A rack but that has two power feeds in standardized position for each rack unit. When you slide in the server in the rack, you provide power. It would slide in the power connector provided by the rack. More specifically I mean that the server would get automatically connected to IEC 320 C13 female provided by the rack. The modifications to a standard server would be too standardize the position of two 230V/110V power feeds.

Alternatively, connect the server to a 48DC bus when its racked in providing +48 volt direct current and ground which can be through the server chassis.

Network connectivity should be provided in two standardized positions as well.

Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#42

Post by nuclear_eclipse »

baybal2 wrote: post #36
nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's entire blob storage and data warehouse (multi-exabyte) is run completely on OCP storage hardware built by ODMs, of which Quanta is included. Anyone telling you that we don't use OCP is grossly misinformed. Source: I was on the blob storage team when we migrated all of our data from OCP's gen1 storage design [1] to the new gen2 storage design [2]. 1: https://www.opencompute.org/documents/facebook-open-vault…

Well, then it is. What do you use for regular servers these day?

More OCP hardware (or designs that will eventually be contributed to OCP), in many different SKUs depending on use case. This page lists most of the current-gen hardware that I am aware of:

https://www.opencompute.org/contributions?refinementList%5Bc...

Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#43

Post by akhilcacharya »

Twirrim wrote: post #37
akhilcacharya wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the current industry practice for blades? Does AWS GCP, Azure use them?

> Does AWS GCP, Azure use them? No. Cost / value is not in alignment there. You want your servers to be cheap and disposable. Plus lose the control plane and you lose all the blades within it. There's just no value to it unless you're doing workloads that benefit from a high degree of locality. Cloud services focus on having their networks be as fast as possible so as to reduce the disadvantage of not being highly lo…

I work AWS adjacent and I wish there was more externally facing information about how the DC's are operated. It seems like a really neat space.

Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#44

Post by altmind »

walrus01 wrote: post #17
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #2

This strikes me as a gigantic coordinated form of commoditize your complement.

DC power wise, the original reason why they did this is that it's grossly inefficient to have a 42RU worth of 1U servers, each with its own individual 110-240VAC to 12/5VDC power supply in it. Or the equivalent of that with four-servers-in-2RU type setups, but also with AC to DC power supplies. They centralized the AC to DC conversion in a single unit in the rack, feeding either 277VAC or 480VAC to each rack, and ran…

Hmm, but arent there low-voltage DC server PSU? I know that a lot of network gear(cisco) can be powered by 48V DC. Quick googling shows there are a lot of options like these. I dont see how designing own server form factor is a better solution than using COTS components.

Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#45

Post by Twirrim »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #43
Twirrim wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does AWS GCP, Azure use them? No. Cost / value is not in alignment there. You want your servers to be cheap and disposable. Plus lose the control plane and you lose all the blades within it. There's just no value to it unless you're doing workloads that benefit from a high degree of locality. Cloud services focus on having their networks be as fast as possible so as to reduce the disadvantage of not being highly lo…

I work AWS adjacent and I wish there was more externally facing information about how the DC's are operated. It seems like a really neat space.

It's more boring than you'd probably expect. Boring is simple, reliable and cheap. The less opportunities for things to go wrong, the better.

Re: Facebook announces next-generation Open Rack frame

#46

Post by baybal2 »

Twirrim wrote: post #38
baybal2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't and that is what baffles me

So.... maybe it's worth considering that your initial premise is faulty?

Well, in that case I just got disinformated. My buddy worked in their DC, and that was his first hand account: "OCP stuff came with major deficiencies, haphazardly reverting everything back to off the shelf U1s"
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