It will find application in hyperscale data centers.
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Why was the spec updated?
Engineers from the Open Compute Project (OCP) standard back in 2013. He described the modular and open design of 21-inch wide data center racks. This approach has increased the effective use of rack space to 87,5%. By comparison, 19" racks, which are the standard today, are only 73%.
Additionally, engineers have changed the approach to power distribution. The main innovation was the 12-volt bus to which the equipment is connected. It eliminated the need to install its own power supply for each server.
Came out in 2015 . It contains developers to the 48-volt model and reduced the number of transformers, which reduced the power consumption of the racks by 30%. Thanks to these features, the standard has become widespread in the IT industry. Racks started actively large IT corporations, telecommunications companies and banks.
Recently, developers have introduced a new specification - Open Rack v3. According to the authors of the OCP initiative, it is being developed for high-load data centers that process data for AI and ML systems. The hardware solutions implemented in them have a high power dissipation density. For their effective operation, a new design of racks was required.
What is already known about Open Rack v3
The developers note that the new standard will be more flexible and versatile than v2, and will also take all the best from previous versions - energy efficiency, modularity, compactness. In particular, that it will continue to use 48-volt power supplies.
The design of the new racks will need to improve air circulation and heat dissipation. By the way, liquid systems will be used to cool the equipment. Members of the OCP on several solutions in this area. In particular, liquid contact circuits, rack-mounted heat exchangers, and immersion systems are being developed.
Next, here are some physical parameters of the new racks:
Form factor, U
48 or 42
Rack width, mm
600
Rack depth, mm
1068
Maximum load, kg
1600
Operating Temperature Range, ° C
10 – 60 Feet
Operating humidity, %
85
Cooling type
Liquid
Opinions
Specification Developers , which in the future Open Rack v3 will reduce the cost of IT systems in data centers. At Schneider Electric that the second version of the racks is already reducing server maintenance costs by 25% compared to traditional rack designs. There is reason to believe that the new specification will improve this figure.
Among the shortcomings of the standard, experts the difficulty of adapting equipment and machine rooms to its requirements. There is a possibility that the cost of refurbishing server rooms will exceed the potential benefits from their implementation. For this reason, Open Rack is mostly focused on new data centers.
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More to the cons design features of the solution. The open rack architecture does not provide protection against dust. Plus, it increases the chance of damaging equipment or cables.
Similar projects
In March, another specification for racks was released - (Download PDF file to view specification). The document was developed in the Open19 Foundation, where since 2017 standardize approaches to creating data centers. We talked about this organization in more detail in .
The Open19 System Level standard describes a universal form factor for racks and sets requirements for network structure and power consumption. The Open19 team suggests using so-called brick cages. They are modules with several chassis in which you can place the necessary hardware - servers or storage systems - in arbitrary combinations. Also in the design there are power shelves, switches, network switches and a cable management system.
For cooling, an immersion system is used. dry water direct-to-chip. Concept authors that the Open19 architecture improves overall data center energy efficiency by 10%.
IT industry experts believe that in the future, projects like Open19 and Open Rack will make it possible to quickly build flexible data centers for working with IoT solutions, contribute to the development of 5G technologies and peripheral computing.
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Source: habr.com