Server Generations

Freedom laid the groundwork for new generations to come. In 2012, Facebook released the specs for its second server design, dubbed "Windmill", which brought updated mainboards supporting Intel's Sandy Bridge-EP platform and AMDs Opteron 6200/6300 CPUs.

Following table details all Facebook-designed OCP servers, starting with Freedom, with highlighted differences.

Facebook-designed OCP Server Generations
  Freedom (Intel) Freedom (AMD) Windmill (Intel) Watermark (AMD) Winterfell Leopard
Platform Westmere-EP Interlagos Sandy Bridge-EP Interlagos Sandy Bridge-EP / Ivy-Bridge EP Haswell-EP
Chipset 5500 SR5650/
SP5100
C602 SR5650/
SR5670/
SR5690
C602 C226
Models X5500/
X5600
Opteron 6200/6300 E5-2600 Opteron 6200/6300 E5-2600 v1 / v2 E5-2600v3
Sockets 2 2 2 2 2 2
Max TDP allowed (in Watt) 95 85 115 85 115 145
RAM per socket 3x DDR3 12x DDR3 8x DDR3 8x DDR3 8x DDR3 8x DDR4
/NVDIMM
~ Node Width (inch) 21 21 8 21 6.5 6.5
Form factor (height in rack U) 1.5 1.5 1.5 1.5 2 2
Fans per node 4 4 2 4 2 2
Fan width (in mm) 60 60 60 60 80 80
Disk bays (3.5'') 6 6 6 6 1 1
Disk interface SATA II SATA II SATA III SATA III SATA III / RAID HBA SATA III
/ M.2
Amount of DIMM slots per socket 9 12 9 12 8 8
DDRX gen 3 3 3 3 3 4
Ethernet connectivity 1 GbE fixed 2 GbE fixed 2 GbE fixed + PCIe mezz 2 GbE fixed 1GbE fixed + 8x PCIe Mezz 8x PCIe
Mezz
Deployed in Prineville, Oregon Prineville Lulea, Sweden Lulea Altoona ?
PSU model PowerOne SPAFCBK- 01G PowerOne SPAFCBK- 01G PowerOne PowerOne N/A N/A
PSU count 1 1 1 1 N/A N/A
PSU capacity (in Watt) 450 450 450 450 N/A N/A
Amount of nodes per sled 1 1 2 2 3 3
BMC No (Intel RMM) No No (Intel RMM) No No (Intel RMM) Yes (Aspeed AST1250
w 1GB
Samsung DDR3 DIMM K4B1G1646G- BCH9 )

Facebook indicated that its expected lifespan for its Freedom nodes is around three years, and is in the process of swapping out deprecated equipment with OpenRack v1 based equipment.

Introduction Integrate: OpenRack
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  • SuperVeloce - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link

    From Mass storage: "Compared to hard disks optical media touts greater reliability, with Blu-ray discs having a life expectancy of 50 years and some discs could even be able to live on for a century."

    Yeah sure. Like my expensive gold color cd's from different vendors, baked on different high quality writers, now mostly not working anymore after some 15-20 years. Despite being held in almost perfect environment all these years
  • Uplink10 - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link

    Someday they are going to figure out that:
    -SAS HDDs are costlier but if you are using RAID it does not matter, they should use consumer drives and not overpriced enterprise drives
    -I calculated sometimes back if Bluray cold storage is cheaper than HDDs but it is not and more so you cannot change the data once you write it, it is better to go with HDDs
  • toyotabedzrock - Wednesday, April 29, 2015 - link

    You have to wonder what these networking chip vendors are hiding in the firmware that makes them so resistant to open sourcing the code.
  • Casper42 - Monday, May 4, 2015 - link

    Johan, some of the HP info at the end was interesting, but incomplete.
    If you (or anyone reading this) plan to talk to HP, they will also talk about their relatively new CloudLine "CL" type machines as well.
    They come in standard 1RU/2RU designs as well as OpenRack designs coming soon.
    And the SL line is all being morphed over to Project Apollo which uses the XL prefix.
    Apollo 2500 is now live, 4X00 will replace SL4500, 6000 has already replaced S6500, and the 8000 was a net-new add for Gen9 focused on big HPC farms.
    So anything SL is, or soon will be, a dead platform. (The SLs you mention could be an exception since they are not widely commercially available)
  • Netpower - Tuesday, June 2, 2015 - link

    One general problem with this design is how to take care of power line disturbances entering the power shelves via the 277V AC lines. The 48V DC is filtered via the 48V battery but you must add a filter/power line conditioner somewhere to make sure that transients and sags doesn't kill your power shelves. The 380V DC approach by (http://www.emergealliance.org) is much more reliable and still have all the advantages with higher efficiency, lower cable losses etc.
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