Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#1

Post by arithmetic » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:26 PM UTC

Facebook open sources its servers and data centers
gigaom.com

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#2

Post by yanw » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:37 PM UTC

Not sure how many startups built their own servers anymore, this event seems like a response to the Greenpeace accusations of Facebook's environmental responsibility or wherever.

Edit: I agree it's a good thing, it's just that hosting a press event rather than just making the announcement through a blog post suggests other motives as well.

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#3

Post by amitraman1 » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:47 PM UTC

Wow.

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#4

Post by nroman » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:51 PM UTC

yanw wrote: post #2

Not sure how many startups built their own servers anymore, this event seems like a response to the Greenpeace accusations of Facebook's environmental responsibility or wherever. Edit: I agree it's a good thing, it's just that hosting a press event rather than just making the announcement through a blog post suggests other motives as well.

This is true. However, the services that startups use to host their servers (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, etc.) could adopt these practices in new datacenters because the specs are open. This could lower costs for the startups that use these services, and be good for the environment.

Seems like everyone wins.

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#5

Post by whakojacko » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:52 PM UTC

Link to an article in James Hamilton's blog with actual pdfs of various designs: http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2011/04/07/OpenComputeProje...

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#6

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:56 PM UTC

nroman wrote: post #4

yanw wrote: post #2

Not sure how many startups built their own servers anymore, this event seems like a response to the Greenpeace accusations of Facebook's environmental responsibility or wherever. Edit: I agree it's a good thing, it's just that hosting a press event rather than just making the announcement through a blog post suggests other motives as well.

This is true. However, the services that startups use to host their servers (Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, etc.) could adopt these practices in new datacenters because the specs are open. This could lower costs for the startups that use these services, and be good for the environment. Seems like everyone wins.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#7

Post by flyt » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 5:57 PM UTC

yanw wrote: post #2

Not sure how many startups built their own servers anymore, this event seems like a response to the Greenpeace accusations of Facebook's environmental responsibility or wherever. Edit: I agree it's a good thing, it's just that hosting a press event rather than just making the announcement through a blog post suggests other motives as well.

This isn't a response to Greenpeace, this is a response to the real costs that it takes to run compute infrastructure at the scale of Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc.

If a datacenter can run at 1.07 PUE (as Facebook's new datacenter does), then it directly translates to massive power cost savings. Environmental efficiency just comes along with it.

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#8

Post by flyt » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:00 PM UTC

Get all the CAD files and other specifications here: http://opencompute.org

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#9

Post by beagledude » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:23 PM UTC

say what you want about Facebook but I give them props for open sourcing so much code to the community. Cassandra, Thrift, Scribe,Hive, etc...

Re: Facebook open sources its servers and data centers

#10

Post by kellysutton » Thu, Apr 07, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

yanw wrote: post #2

Not sure how many startups built their own servers anymore, this event seems like a response to the Greenpeace accusations of Facebook's environmental responsibility or wherever. Edit: I agree it's a good thing, it's just that hosting a press event rather than just making the announcement through a blog post suggests other motives as well.

blip.tv builds and maintains our own servers and data centers. We started before the Cloud though :)