Facebook: 'Open hardware' integral to green IT infrastructure

Open Compute Project strives to model itself after the Apache Software Foundation, with technical contributions vetted by community members.

Is the secret to building greener, more energy-efficient data centers using “open hardware” optimized for that purpose?

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Facebook and its allies in the Open Compute Project certainly would have you believe that this is so. Right now, most server hardware vendors invest in “gratuitous differentiation” and not true innovation, according to Andy Bechtolsheim, the chief development officer for Arista Networks and co-founder of Sun Microsystems who is one of the Open Compute Project’s five newly named board members.

“What has been missing is standards at the systems level,” Bechtolsheim told attendees of the Open Compute summit held this week in New York.

If you step back and look at what Facebook was able to accomplish at its Prinville, Ore., data center, the evidence certainly suggests that Internet service providers or those building cloud infrastructure would do well to embrace some of this philosophy.

Facebook built its own servers for that facility, adopted a new power distribution design, and approached each rack holistically in order to create drive efficiencies. That facility can run work loads using up to 38 percent less energy than its counterparts at a 24 percent cost reduction, according to the Open Compute Web page. “This isn’t just important for the environment, it is green for the bottom line,” said Frank Frankovsky, director of technical operations for Facebook and chairman for the Open Compute Project.

Let’s be clear. Open Compute Project isn’t a standards organization. It is modeled after the open source software movement, which Frankovsky and other Open Compute Project members suggest has spurred innovation that has far outpaced true advances in the software world. Community members are being encouraged to contributed designs and architectural best practices. For example, ASUS has submitted motherboard specifications while Facebook is opening up its OpenRack specifications.

The other thing to keep in mind is that there is a lot more to a data center than just the information technology housed within.

In his presentation during the Open Compute Summit, James Hamilton, vice president and distinguished engineer with Amazon Web Services, pointed out that there has been more data center innovation in the past five years than in the past 15 years — inspired by the challenges of scale commputing.

The cost of infrastructure directly impacts service costs, so efficiency is paramount. During his talk, here are several issues that Hamilton discussed:

Virtualization: Intuitively, current best practices suggest that less is more in the data center. But Hamilton suggests that data center managers think twice about turning off a server just to save power. “Any workload that is worth more than the marginal cost of power is worth it,” he said.
Power distribution: Up to 11 percent of the power that heads into a data center is typically lost through conversions and other legacy design issues in the grid. Any conversions that can be eliminated along the way, SHOULD be eliminated. UPS technology, he suggests, is in for an overhaul. (Facebook, as an example, has redesigned the way it includes back-up power in its racks.)
Temperatures must rise: Even though most managers run their data centers at 77 degrees Fahrenheit today, most systems can tolerate much higher temperatures. If everyone raises the temperature AND talks about the results, temperatures will rise across the sector.
Use outside air 100 percent of the time for cooling, period.
Look to water cooling technologies, including evaporative cooling methods.
Think modular: Regardless of the specific servers they use, the most efficient data centers in the world all use modular architectures that use some sort of outside cooling mechanism. That includes Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon.

The cynic in me believes that the Open Compute movement has as long uphill battle to face in existing data center environments. Yet, as the industry moves to scale computing architectures that can support cloud-delivered infrastructure services and applications, it is clear that the hardware world may be holding things back. That, in itself, is a reason to keep a close eye on Open Compute Project development.

Why Microsoft's vision of the future will really happen

Two videos from Microsoft show the future of technology. Here's why I think they're dead-on

Computerworld - Microsoft released a video in 2008 and another one this week that together predict the sleek, wireless, connected gadgets we'll all enjoy by the year 2019.

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In one scene, two businesspeople each place a smart object on a smart table -- a keychain fob and a flat phone or smartcard of some kind. From these devices, out spills their data, which can be manipulated on the table. The same thing happens at home, where a girl's homework spills out onto the kitchen table, and cookbook instructions spill out onto the kitchen counter.

Data and documents can apparently be transferred from anything to anything else. One business-related example involves a drag-and-drop gesture from a desktop to a mobile device. In another scene, that same mobile device becomes a virtual keyboard for a desktop computer the user happens to be sitting at.

Another example shows a man "capturing" with a kind of take-a-picture gesture using a clear-glass remote control then moving data from a wall-mounted device and dumping it out onto his e-newspaper.

Videoconferencing has been perfected. What looks like a glass window into another classroom is actually a live, big-screen video chat connecting schools in India and Australia. In one scene, two children interact with each other, each speaking a different language instantly translated with cartoon-like speech bubbles.

Intelligent agents pay attention to what's going on. The kids fingerpaint a dog onscreen, and the computer recognizes the image and animates it accordingly.

One very cool and versatile device shown in the video is a smartphone, a card-like gadget so thin that a woman uses it as a book marker. The card functions as a boarding pass, an airport map, a calendar, an augmented reality window, a 3D holographic display and more.

The phone splits into two halves about the size of playing cards, with one "card" displaying live video and the other held up to the ear for videoconferencing on the go. It even projects some kind of laser beam arrow on the ground, telling Mr. Future Businessman where to go.

Everything is connected to everything. Intelligent agents make decisions about when to inform the user about relevant data.
Why these are great predictions

Everything in this video is being worked on, refined and developed. If you follow current trends for compute power, display technology, networking speeds, device miniaturization, flexible displays, touchscreens, gesture technologies and others, you get this Microsoft future.

And Microsoft itself is working on much of this. The intelligent displays are really just advanced versions of what's possible now with a Microsoft Surface table. The in-air gestures are advanced versions of what Kinect for Xbox 360 users are already doing.

Industrywide, displays are getting bigger while devices are getting thinner and lighter. Companies have already developed versions of clear displays, augmented reality systems and all the rest.

The past four years have ushered in thin multitouch tablets supporting gestures and intelligent agent voice technology.

Although breathtaking to look at and consider, everything in Microsoft's videos are fairly conservative predictions based on existing products or technology actively being developed.
Why Microsoft won't build it

There tends to be little connection between companies that envision the future clearly and those who build it.

What does Windows XP's tenth birthday mean to you?

For all its wide usage and market share, I never liked Windows XP, and never ran it on any system I've owned. I stuck with Windows 2000 until the release of Windows Server 2003, bought a license for that—I was a software developer at the time, and I needed access to IIS 6—and used it as my desktop system until the release of Windows Vista, switching as soon as I could buy it. I couldn't stand Luna—it was so bulbous and blobby, so faux-organic, so garish—but I loved the Watercolor theme that Microsoft used during Windows XP's beta, and so duly patched Windows Server 2003 to let me use a Watercolor theme.

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I was happy with my Windows XP-free existence. Then I got an office job, and I had to use it as part of the corporate install. I still didn't care for it. Sure, it more or less worked, but I never really liked it. My workplace stuck with Windows XP after Windows Vista was released, and with this my dislike turned to disgust. Windows Vista's searchable Start menu was a fantastic feature, and I resented every moment that I had to spend deprived of its convenience.

But for many, Windows XP became the pinnacle of operating systems. Time can be cruel to old software—it can make its shortcomings, its missing features and clunkiness, all the more apparent—but it can also be kind. With time, even the most sluggish and oversized of programs can become lightning quick. Windows XP was never bloated, and as hardware improved, it became downright lightweight. Its system resource usage was basically negligible. It did its job well enough, and it did so with a minimum of burden.

It's the enterprise, more than anything else, that has fallen in love with Windows XP. It took a while to warm to the new operating system, but once companies were on board with it, the lure of an operating system that they wouldn't have to change for years on end became intoxicating. In the eyes of many, Windows XP "just works"; no fuss, no messing around. Yes, stability is important, and yes, changing the operating system costs money—but with Windows Vista and Windows 7 you get something for that money. You get much better security track record, much better support for modern hardware and standards such as IPv6. You get more powerful deployment, imaging, and management capabilities. There are many good reasons to move on.

To me, the fact that Windows XP is still widely used a decade later is a cause for dismay. It means that people are missing out on better software and better experiences. Windows XP works, just, but it's time to move on. We have technologies today that just weren't a factor for Windows XP; ubiquitous powerful 3D accelerators, abundant multicore processors, USB3, Thunderbolt, and SSDs with TRIM support. Laptops now outsell desktops, making power efficiency, cloud connectivity, and data security more important than ever. The Internet is a much more hostile place, making robust operating system security essential. The world of 2011 isn't the same as the world of 2001, and software needs to reflect that.

So as we observe the tenth anniversary of XP's release, what feelings does it evoke in you? Will you (or your workplace) stick with it to the bitter end, continuing to use it into 2014 and beyond? Will the advance of technology slow down such that Windows 7 will enjoy a similar lifespan? Or is goodbye and good riddance to Windows XP? Weigh in with your comments below.