Digital News South Africa

Facebook makes data centres greener and cheaper

PALO ALTO: Facebook on Thursday (7 April 2011) presented an internet-obsessed world with a gift; greener, cheaper data centres to more efficiently power online services. The social networking star custom-designed hardware, power supply, and architecture of a new US data centre that is 38% more power efficient and costs 24% less to build than the industry average.
Facebook makes data centres greener and cheaper

Schematics and designs for Facebook's revolutionary data centre in the Oregon city of Prineville were made available to the world as part of an Open Compute Project announced by founder Mark Zuckerberg.

"We found a lot of stuff mass manufacturers were putting out wasn't what we needed, so we customised it to better fit social applications," Zuckerberg said during a press conference at Facebook's campus in Palo Alto, California.

"We are trying to foster this ecosystem where developers can easily build startups."

A shift to hosting software applications as services in the internet "cloud" is driving enormous growth of data centres globally, according to Graham Watson, chairman and founder of US computer network hosting giant Rackspace.

Cheaper data centres should translate into lower costs for internet startups that typically rent computing capacity, providing a "turbo-charge" for innovation, according to Dell computer vice president of server platforms Forrest Norrod.

"Facebook's design is really a leap forward, because it is much simpler, cheaper and greener," Watson said.

"I think it's the biggest reduction in server infrastructure cost in a decade."

Source: AFP

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