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Google racks up its first contributions to Open Compute Project

Describes high-efficiency 48v racks it offers as Open Rack 2.0 standard

Google has for the first time shared some of its data centre designs with the OpenCompute Project (OCP).

Google joined OCP back in March 2016 and, at the time, talked up its 48v racks and promised a new spec that would allow them to work with OCP servers in its own bit barns … and yours, should you choose to use OCP standards.

The Alphabet subsidiary has made good on that promise and shared a rack design in the hope they become part of the Open Rack 2.0 standard. Facebook's chipped in with some help, too.

Google says its efforts comprise a “48V power architecture with a modular, shallow-depth form factor that enables high-density deployment of OCP racks into data centers with limited space.”

The ads-and-search company says it has “extensively deployed these high-efficiency, high-availability systems since 2010.”

“We have seen significant reduction in losses and increased efficiency compared to 12V solutions,” writes technical program manager Debosmita Das and technical lead manager Mike Lau,” adding that “The improved SPUE with 48V has saved Google millions of dollars and kilowatt hours.”

OCP kit is available from the likes of Taiwan's Wiwynn, so if you really want to run kit designed for hyper-scale deployments you can. But if you're not buying servers by the thousand, the standard is generally considered a bit over-the-top. Which is not to say that position will hold for long: Google bet big on containers and now they're being advocated as a mainstream security tactic.

Which is why Google's explanation of its rack design as suitable for bit barns with “limited space” intrigues: few businesses can buy or operate data centres on the scale of the web's big players. But of those players are helping the average data centre to cram in more kit, OCP may follow containers and other cloud-inspired tech into the mainstream. ®

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