Facebook's Open Compute Project is, on the surface, specifications for servers, racks, cooling and power distribution planned for its data centers. Somewhat surprisingly, the project continues to evolve and produce more specifications. In my view, it's a business initiative that drives cheaper procurement of data center hardware assets for Facebook. Sure Facebook hopes other companies will use this as a jumping-off point for their own data center initiatives.
How does that benefit Facebook? I speculate that there are manufacturers all over the world who would be delighted to make something that doesn't need an expensive design and validation process, and will thus reduce cost. Consider that a factory manager can download the specifications and start building a rack. Those racks are likely to have a market and, therefore, the products will sell to a wholesaler. Server enclosures and motherboards are also part of Open Compute.
To learn more and to read the entire article at its source, please refer to the following page, Open Compute Racks: Are We Going to Use Them in Our Data Centers?- NetworkComputing.com
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