Microsoft has previously revealed that it runs over one million servers around the world and this week the company will offer the specifications that it uses for those datacenters to the Open Compute Project. It will also release the software code that it uses to manage the server hardware to the open source community.
The Open Compute Project was begun by Facebook over two years ago with the goal of developing new server hardware and software in the same way that open source software products have been created. Microsoft's server specifications that are being offered to the OCP are designed to handle the needs of the company's Windows Azure cloud platform. Microsoft stated:
They offer dramatic improvements over traditional enterprise server designs: up to 40 percent server cost savings, 15 percent power efficiency gains and 50 percent reduction in deployment and service times. We also expect this server design to contribute to our environmental sustainability efforts by reducing network cabling by 1,100 miles and metal by 10,000 tons across our base of 1 million servers.
Microsoft's datacenters website has more information on the specifics of its cloud server hardware specs, including its EIA rack mountable 12U chassis that can support up to 24 commodity servers per chassis; Microsoft's software for managing the server hardware can now be downloaded at GitHub,
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft
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