Joining the already impressive bill of speakers at the Open Compute Project Summit in San Jose, California, Brian Obernesser (Director of Data Center Architecture with Fidelity Investments) gave a short and powerful presentation simply titled the Open Bridge Rack walking the audience through the process of designing this device, from inception through manufacturing.

Fidelity has been active in OCP since the beginning, leading and participating in a variety of OCP projects and forums.

In addition to the obvious benefits of the mechanical and the electrical efficiencies on the hardware side, Fidelity embraces the spirit of innovation, open collaboration thats so prevalent in the community today, said Obernesser.But when it comes to adopting OCP hardware, for Fidelity it starts with the rack. We had some challenges with the initial OpenRack designs.

There were the obvious hardware incompatibilities between EIA and OCP standards, but for us OCP adoption meant rack replacement. Power systems were sometimes welded to racks, meaning manufacturers would have to operate or design outside their core competencies. Serviceability was a challenge as well. Some of the welded components were difficult if not impossible to access if they required repair, explained Obernesser.

The initial OCP OpenRack designs were not ready for enterprise consumption. That led Fidelity to design their own.

We submitted an idea to the Hackathon in January 2013, an idea of a convertible rack, and a team of five people came up with the first schematics, recalled Obernesser. It was still pretty bulky, heavy, difficult to manufacture and expensive.

This led Fidelity to search for strategic partners in the industry, with experience in manufacturing these components, bringing them where they are today.

The benefits of OpenRack are multiple: it is compatible with both OCP and EIA and it can be converted from the EIA to OCP standards very rapidly, explained Obernesser. The power has been disaggregated from the rack, so this allows subject matter experts and manufacturers to innovate within their respective areas. It also allows Fidelity to respond to the rack demands in our environment.

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Perks of Open Bridge Rack : Customization + agnosticism | #OCPSummit