Open Compute Project

Hacking Conventional Computing Infrastructure

We started a project at Facebook a little over a year ago with a pretty big goal: to build one of the most efficient computing infrastructures at the lowest possible cost.

We decided to honor our hacker roots and challenge convention by custom designing and building our software, servers and data centers from the ground up.

The result is a data center full of vanity free servers which is 38% more efficient and 24% less expensive to build and run than other state-of-the-art data centers¹.

But we didn't want to keep it all for ourselves. Instead, we decided to collaborate with the entire industry and create the Open Compute Project, to share these technologies as they evolve.

Server Technology

Open Compute servers are designed to be efficient, inexpensive and easy to service. They're also vanity free, with no extra plastic and significantly fewer parts than traditional servers.

View server specs and mechanical designs

Data Center Technology

Designed in tandem with our servers, the data center maximizes mechanical performance and thermal and electrical efficiency. It accepts 277 volts of AC, so more energy makes it from the grid to the data center to server components.

View data center specs and mechanical designs

Energy Efficiency

As a result of the Open Compute Project, Facebook's Oregon data center is now one of the most efficient in the world:

• Facebook’s energy consumption per unit of computing power has declined by 38%².
• The new data center has a PUE of 1.07³, well below the EPA-defined state-of-the-art industry average of 1.5¹. This means 93% of the energy from the grid makes it into every Open Compute server.
• We've removed centralized chillers, eliminated traditional inline UPS systems and removed a 480V to 208V transformation.
• Ethernet-powered LED lighting and passive cooling infrastructure reduce energy spent on running the facility.

Learn more about Facebook's green initiatives.

1. Report to Congress on Server and Data Center Energy Efficiency, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ENERGY STAR Program, August 2, 2007.
2. Facebook lab testing conducted in February 2011, under production workloads.
3. PUE calculated at full load over an 8 hour period during the commissioning stage in December 2010. We expect our PUE to fluctuate over time and will report it on a quarterly basis.

Openness

By releasing Open Compute Project technologies as open hardware, our goal is to develop servers and data centers following the model traditionally associated with open source software projects.

Our first step is releasing the specifications and mechanical drawings. The second step is working with the community to improve them.

Please take a look, tell us what we did wrong and join us in working together to make every data center more efficient.

via opencompute.org