![[article image]](https://cacm.acm.org/system/assets/0000/5017/041111_TR_Facebook-Data-Center.large.jpg?1476779415&1302535342 "Facebook data center")
Hewlett-Packard, Advanced Micro Devices, Fidelity, Quanta, Tencent, Salesforce.com, VMware, Canonical, and Supermicro have joined Facebook's Open Compute Project (OCP).
The project seeks to open up hardware specifications and designs to create power-efficient and economical data centers, and plans to develop standards that enable companies to gain better control of hardware instead of being locked into particular vendors.
"We've started to see a convergence of voices among the consumers of this technology around where we think the industry would benefit from standardization and where we think the opportunities for innovation are," says OCP board member Frank Frankovsky.
New hardware designs include Facebook's "vanity-free" storage server and motherboard designs contributed by chipmakers AMD and Intel. Meanwhile, VMware will certify its vSphere virtualization platform to run on hardware based on OCP's Open Rack specification.
The Facebook design could become a de facto industry standard for cloud and Web 2.0 data centers, which would make it easier to deploy and manage systems, says analyst Charles King. Participating companies also should benefit because new Open Rack designs will give them an opportunity to meet the server specifications of large customers such as Google.
From IDG News Service
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