A joint design research project (HES-SO) between ECAL, HEAD, EPFL-ECAL Lab & EPFL
The Open Compute Project was initiated by Facebook. They decided to fully open the specifications of their data center in Prineville, all specs (from hardware to software, through cabinet and building design, etc.) In this way, Facebook pioneered the open source approach that many major players are now adopting.
This resource will undoubtedly serve our project when it will come to think about the infrastructure.
A software project worth mentioning even so we didn’t have the occasion to test it yet. It looks like it technically follows some points we would like to follow too during our project, even so it is probably to much in its “infancy” (alpha version 0.3.1 at this date) and unstable at this stage for us to use.
Other projects that seem worth mentioning are these mini mobile, “all in one” modular units that look very infrastructural. The Mobile Data Center Solution by Avnet was launched in 2013, the C3 – S.P.E.A.R. by Eliptical Mobile Solution too (which seems to serve as the base for the Avnet one btw).
Certainly another key conceptual element of cloud computing. At least on the infrastructural side. A highly secured (yet paranoid) approach of hardware and software.
The 19″ rack as a long story and like most “normalized” artifacts, some of its dimensions are inherited by past uses/components (telephony?), some of which are not used anymore.
The 19″ rack is globally used as a standardized server enclosure (or computer cabinet) in data centers. Build in steel and usually heavy, it is nonetheless designed to be mobile (mounted on wheels and easily packable on pallet and/or within containers for transportation). This massive use leads to the common esthetic of the data center, with straight lines of cabinets containing multiple servers. A 19″ rack usually do the same thing at a very small size than a full data center: it physically protects servers, organizes their dispatching in a very rational way and control air flows & climate/temperature.
We cannot speak about servers cabinet without mentioning the other normative unit that structure them: “U“. A “U” is a rack unit that describes the height of the equipments within the rack.
... Along the design research, we are going through many different types of references that we don't necessarily post or document ...
The website presenting the downloadable results of the joint design and ethnographic research Inhabiting and Interfacing the Cloud(s) is now ...