Facebook's Open Compute could make DIY data centres feasible

DIY data centres made easy

The selection of ultra-low-margin servers and storage is getting better and better every month. In fact, the low-margin providers are even now certifying their solutions for various hypervisors. The near universal adoption of virtualisation combined with the sheer number of people adopting these models means that finding benchmarks, quirks, foibles and driver conflicts is now a minor research project for the average SMB.

Put simply: DIY data centres are no longer required to recreate significant chunks of the COTS vendors' value-add, because there is an in-between.

Perpetually grinding out the lowest-margin services possible means the heavy-lifter hyperscale cloud providers are able to build data centres for tens of billions of dollars cheaper than if they were to try buying COTS servers from a tier-one provider. Locking a spreadsheet nerd in a room with some prototypes and a few electrical engineers is not, by comparison, a relevant expense. They will continue to do so for some time to come.

Anyone willing to maintain their own spares cabinet and deal with some minor supply chain issues can use Open Compute to make DIY data centres cheaply and easily. And while that's great for an enterprise, the value of this decreases the smaller you get.

Ten years ago, when I ran my ring of n'er-do-wells, the cost of computers was higher than it is today. Open Compute, recession and the rise of companies like Xbyte and Server Monkey have driven down margins.

We also had many Sys Admins working together, pooling the resources of MSPs and individual companies until collectively we had the budget of an upper-midmarket company and the manpower resources of an enterprise. Even with the advances to the DIY market, the cost of dealing with supply chain issues makes COTS the better plan.

Supermicro can provide both four-hour and next-business-day support. When you add in support you're looking at a fair sight more per server than an Open Compute rig, but nowhere near as much as either the costs of maintaining that supply chain yourself or of turning to the likes of Dell or HP.

Some companies want not only the supply chain, certification, support and testing that Supermicro brings to the table, but they want the enterprise management software of the HP or Dell, as well as the near universal recognition of models.

A very limited number of people will know what you're talking about if you quote an Open Compute model. Only the nerdiest of spreadsheet nerds will understand what you mean if you try to use a Supermicro model name for anything. Nearly everyone knows what's in a Dell R710 or can discuss issues with HP Gen 9 servers in depth.

COTS servers are the consoles of the data centre. In the fullness of time, you'll end up paying a lot more. From not getting access to BIOS updates unless you pay for support to having to pay a licence to access the IPKVM functionality of your server's baseband management controller, COTS servers cost. They're a lot up front and they nickel and dime you until the bitter end.

But, like those gaming consoles, they are a known platform. Lots of developers target them specifically. If there is a problem, then it's likely millions of others are experiencing it and so the solutions will be easy to find. There's value provided for that extra dollar, but is it enough?