Formation 2011 Founded 2011 | Website opencompute.org Type of business Trade association | |
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The Open Compute Project (OCP) is an organization that shares designs of data center products among companies, including Facebook, Intel, Nokia, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Seagate Technology, Dell, Rackspace, Ericsson, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, Lenovo and Bank of America.
Contents
The Open Compute Project's mission is to design and enable the delivery of the most efficient server, storage and data center hardware designs for scalable computing. "We believe that openly sharing ideas, specifications and other intellectual property is the key to maximizing innovation and reducing operational complexity in the scalable computing space."
All Facebook Data Centers are 100% OCP: Prineville Data Center, Forest City Data Center, Altoona Data Center, Luleå Data Center (Sweden). Facebook Data Centers under construction: Fort Worth Data Center, Clonee Data Center (Ireland).
Open compute project introduction
Details
The initiative was announced in April 2011 by Jonathan Heiliger at Facebook to openly share designs of data center products. The effort came out of a redesign of Facebook's data center in Prineville, Oregon. After two years, with regards to a more modular server design, it was admitted that "the new design is still a long way from live data centers". However, some aspects published were used in the Prineville center to improve the energy efficiency, as measured by the power usage effectiveness index defined by The Green Grid.
The Open Compute Project Foundation is a 501(c)(6) non-profit incorporated in the state of Delaware. Corey Bell serves as the Foundation's CEO. Currently there are 7 members who serve on board of directors which is made up of two individual members and five organizational members. Jason Taylor (Facebook) is the Foundation's president and chairman. Frank Frankovsky (formerly of Facebook and past president and chairman) and Andy Bechtolsheim are the two individual members. In addition to Jason Taylor who represents Facebook, other organizations on the Open Compute board of directors include Intel (Jason Waxman), Goldman Sachs (Don Duet), Rackspace (Mark Roenick), and Microsoft (Bill Laing).
On March 11, 2015 Apple, Cisco and Juniper Networks joined the project.
On November 16, 2015 Nokia joined the project.
On February 23, 2016 Lenovo joined the project.
On March 9, 2016 Google joined the project.
Components of the Open Compute Project include:
Several generations of server designs have been deployed. So far being: Freedom (Intel), Spitfire (AMD), Windmill (Intel E5-2600), Watermark (AMD), Winterfell (Intel E5-2600 v2) and Leopard (Intel E5-2600 v3)
At the OCP Summit 2016 Facebook together with Taiwanese ODM Wistron's spin-off Wiwynn introduced Lightning, a flexible NVMe JBOF (just a bunch of flash), based on the existing Open Vault (Knox) design.
A similar project for a custom switch for the Google platform had been rumored, and evolved to use the OpenFlow protocol.
The first switch Open Sourced by Facebook was designed together with Taiwanese ODM Accton using Broadcom Trident II chip and is called Wedge, the Linux OS that it runs is called FBOSS. Later switch contributions include "6-pack" and Wedge-100, based on Broadcom Tomahawk chips. Similar switch hardware designs have been contributed by: Edge-Core Networks Corporation (Accton spin-off), Mellanox Technologies, Interface Masters Technologies, Agema Systems. Capable of running ONIE compatible Operating Systems such as Cumulus Linux, Big Switch or Pica8.
Litigation
In March, 2015 BladeRoom Group Limited and Bripco (UK) Limited sued Facebook, Emerson Electric Co. and others alleging that Facebook has disclosed BladeRoom and Bripco's trade secrets for prefabricated data centers in the Open Compute Project. Facebook petitioned for the lawsuit to be dismissed, but this was rejected in 2017.
Providers
The promoted vendors include: