Open Rack Servers

The concept was developed in the super data centres owned by Google and Facebook to maximise the computing power and reduce the TCO of server and storage inventory when they realised they no longer wanted to buy the standard hardware from the likes of DELL and HP with all of the Plastic fronts, paint, mounting rails and screws that add to the weight, reduce the airflow / cooling and increase the cost.

The Open Stacked rack concept is based on a modified 19” rack server, the sides are removed and the cabinets tend to be open framed.  The servers themselves are often open, without lids and are mounted with-out the standard rail kit - in the large data centre the servers are often mounted on a tray that slides into the rack and plugs directly into PSUs that are mounted into the framework of the rack.

A significant part of the power used by a server goes towards driving the cooling fans, so a great deal of the design work was centred around having a platform that could accommodate larger cooling fans that could spin at significantly lower speeds to achieve the same air flow thus reducing the power requirements and the costs to power the fans, the power saving is substantial  - for a standard 1U Server, the power consumption is between 10 and 20% of the overall power consumption, the open stacked / open framed servers with the larger fans consume only 2-4% of the total server power requirements.

Broadberry Data Systems have teamed up with Quanta to integrate a range of server and storage solutions designed for the Open Stacked / Open Racked or Cloud Computing market