Facebook saved $ 1.2 billion with Open Compute implementation

On Habré several times already published information about Facebook with their project of open hardware for data centers, which is called Open Compute. More information about this can be found on the project website .

So, recently it became known that the company is not in vain developed a new and rather complex project. With its help, Facebook managed to save (within three years) on the data center — about 1.2 billion US dollars.
')
The calculations, of course, are very approximate, since here we are talking about energy savings, and savings in equipment, and lower operating costs. However, the amount in any case is very significant.

Environment

According to Mark Zuckerberg, who spoke at the Open Compute Summit , over the past three years, Facebook has saved that amount of energy that would be enough for 40,000 homes during the year (about 52 million US dollars). There is a “green” component in these calculations: according to the same Zuckerberg, for 3 years, as a result of the introduction of Open Compute by the company, the emission of harmful substances, which would be enough for 50 thousand cars that roll on roads during the year, was prevented. That is, these cars for the year released into the environment an equivalent amount of harmful substances.

Where does the savings come from?

In general, if we talk about saving, then most of these $ 1.2 billion saved, the company is obliged to be able to receive standardized equipment from different manufacturers. This, in turn, reduces infrastructure and operational costs.

OpenCompute

It is worth recalling that within the framework of OpenCompute, a set of open specifications is being developed to equip data centers aimed at ensuring the maximum efficiency of the infrastructure at minimum costs.

Manufacturers such as Dell, Intel and HP, who have recently begun to manufacture the corresponding equipment, have already joined the initiative.

Facebook launched the OCP project in 2011, seeking to create open standards for high-performance data centers and IT equipment. Previously, the group was engaged in servers and storage systems, and now drew attention to the network. Facebook and other Internet companies, such as Google and Amazon, always need energy-efficient systems that will reduce the cost of their large data centers with tight placement of equipment.

They were not always able to find the necessary resources from other manufacturers. Therefore, from time to time, they developed their own servers, storage devices and power supplies, which were assembled from prefabricated components.

Now such companies as Intel, AMD, Bloomberg, Box, Cumulus Networks, IBM, and Microsoft are working on the development of the project.

Via techcrunch