Das große Unternehmen sich mit grüner Imagefarbe anstreichen, passiert seit geraumer Zeit recht häufig. Auch Facebook hat nun mit Unterstützung vom Open Compute Projekt sein Rechenzentrum nach ökologischen Kriterien optimiert. Das Web-Unternehmen lässt sich dazu gleich noch einen gemeinnützigen Anstrich verpassen: die Einsparungserkenntnisse werden unter einer Open Source Lizenz öffentlich gemacht, „to collaborate with the entire industry“… Selbstverständlich ist dass das Ganze auch ökonomisch effizient. „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.
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.“