Wall Street is changing the approach to data centers

Early last year, the Wall Street Journal wrote that Bank of America (BofA), the second largest bank in the United States, is actively changing the infrastructure of its data center. BofA moves from the traditional hardware of its DC to hardware developed in the framework of the Open Compute Project. Let me remind you that this project is engaged in Facebook, along with a large number of partners. Within three years, BofA is going to transfer 80% of the tasks to the environment of the software-defined data center.

In addition to Bank of America, now other heavyweights of the US financial and banking system plan to change the approach to their business centers. For example, Goldman Sachs engineers have been working with the Open Compute Project for several years, and company representatives have been on the board of directors of the OCP foundation since the founding of the organization and project. Now Goldman is trying to implement the concept of OCP everywhere in their projects.

John Stanley, vice president of IT for Goldman Sachs, reported that 70% of the servers purchased by the company were made on the OCP project. Now the company buys servers from Hyve Solutions, the official manufacturer of equipment based on the OCP platform. Other manufacturers of server hardware are beginning to gradually master OCP, so that after some time, we can expect a reduction in the price for the end user.
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An example of an OCP server that Goldman Sachs purchases.

It will inevitably happen.

Popularization of technologies like OCP is inevitable, says Goldman Sachs, managing director of data center development. In his opinion, the usual process of manufacturing servers, when companies like HP or Dell create proprietary corps, producing them in Asia, outgoing themselves before sending the server to the consumer. Perhaps this is true - HP announced the beginning of work on a line of OCP-compatible servers last month.

Naturally, the giants of the Goldman water must adapt their systems before they can “consume” a new type of server. And this adaptation is further aggravated by the fact that there are not so many OCP-compatible systems on the server and equipment market for data centers. However, HP’s move gives us hope that the market structure will change soon.

Fidelity also moves to OCP

Goldman Sachs is not the only financial company that is trying to change the infrastructure of its data center in the direction of openness, while reducing operating costs. Another company, Fidelity Investments, has also been working in this field for a long time. Almost from the very beginning of the OCP project, Fidelity Investments has been actively involved in all aspects of development, including testing OCP-compatible servers in its data centers. Now Fidelity Investments plans to increase the scale of server adaptation.

In addition, the company's developers make their own contribution to the popularization of the OCP-concept. Not so long ago, this company introduced the “Bridge” rack, which is compatible with both the traditional 19-inch system and the 21.5 chassis of some OCP-compatible systems.

Goldman is currently working on an Open Sensor Network project, the goal of which is to adapt the data center to the Bridge racks. The project team develops its own sensors to determine the humidity, temperature, concentration of dust particles in the air, the detector for opening or closing the rack. Sensors transmit data to the Raspberry Pi, where information is processed, and displayed in a form understandable to the engineer. The main task of the project is to integrate Raspberry Pi into a Hadoop cluster and develop appropriate software.

Other giants show significant interest in OCP

Capital One, another major banking organization, recently became a member of the OCP. Representatives of the organization have already announced their intention to switch to open source software and hardware, using ready-made developments in their data centers.

Representatives of JP Morgan Chase expressed interest in the project and the concept, plus corresponding statements were made by representatives of Bloomberg. Both companies are now looking for the possibility of integrating their infrastructure with OCP.

Using open, not proprietary systems, companies are hoping to reduce the operating costs associated with servicing IT infrastructure. Representatives of telecommunication companies have the same hopes, who are also profitable to reduce costs, increasing the efficiency of the equipment and the entire DC system.