back to article Facebook OCP crowd to ogle MICROSOFT'S server-room SECRETS

Microsoft has released a second clutch of secret blueprints from its server bunkers to Facebook’s Open Compute Project. The giant on Thursday published specs for servers and open-sourced code for the in-house tools its techies use to set up and run Azure, Office 365, Bing and Xbox Live. The idea is for anyone to take …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'll save you some time...

    blah blah... Microsoft evil... blah blah... only an idiot... blah blah... I'd certainly never use that... blah blah blah blah blah.

    Yawn.

    1. hplasm
      Meh

      Re: I'll save you some time...

      True...yes, you may well be...neither would I.

    2. Salts

      Re: I'll save you some time...

      No lover of Microsoft, but this cost them money and they have put it out there, has the Leopard changed it's spots? not sure, but this is still a thing of value, altruistic I very much doubt it, but MS no longer can dictate the market, the bully may be finding, it is surrounded by the snotty nosed brats that have grown up and have also been going to the gym :-)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'll save you some time...

        "We'll give you the plans to enable you to build kit tailored to running our expensive software"

        MS are primarily a software company. Hardly altruistic.

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: I'll save you some time...

          MS are primarily a software mobile first, cloud first company that are desperately trying to get out of the business of supplying any software that doesn't come with a subscription license.

          T,FTFY

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I'll save you some time...

        "No lover of Microsoft, but this cost them money..."

        What? I can find 10 dudes right now that can fully spec off a server in under 20 seconds. Give them some something to smoke, they'll have it all drawn up on a rolling paper in a hour, with software to build on it (all GNU). This doesn't cost Microsoft money, this saves them money. After the ideas of Ballmer (or lack of imagination of Ballmer), they have to be more careful where they invest money for startups...even their own!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Mushroom

          Re: I'll save you some time...

          "What? I can find 10 dudes right now that can fully spec off a server in under 20 seconds."

          Ok so off you go then. If your team is bloody amazing, I'm sure they would love your input. So spec out thermals for each chip, every single chip required, board reference design, the interconnects, the materials, the airflow, the microcode,. Clearly you can do a better job than Google's and MS's engineers.

          I'm serious, if you can design a bare metal system and I MEAN BARE metal in 10 minutes, then go ahead.

          Oh you mean cobble together a motherboard, processor, power suply and a few other bits and bobs? Whoopee-do.

  2. Nate Amsden

    20 milliseconds?

    What kind of generators spin up in 20 milliseconds? Maybe 20 seconds..but even then for me that is way too low, want at least 5 minutes in case something goes wrong with the transfer (same reason I won't put gear in a data center that uses flywheel UPS)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 20 milliseconds?

      Chances are the article missed a step out.

      Server > UPS Battery > generator.

      20ms seems plenty for the load to trip and switch over to battery at which point the generators would have kicked in.

  3. Fungus Bob

    OCP?

    Are they sure it isn't Omni Consumer Products?

    Can Robocop be far behind?

  4. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

    Thank you, Microsoft.

  5. preppy

    Microsoft "Open" Server Specs.....but wait.....

    .......what about the software needed for the ROM used for cold booting? Do I build that myself from the specs, or does Microsoft "helpfully" provide the code?

  6. Gartal

    The usual

    Have any of the detractors here actually read the spec or are they just shooting off their mouths as usual?

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