Open letter for an Open Project
So being involved in OCP from the start and running a project group (virtual IO), and I got involved as an interested party in the testing /certification delivery asked to look at it from my then employer at the time. I should also mention I know Paul Rad and YF Juan both professionally and personally.
I left or got removed OCP depending on the perspective that you want to employ around 2012/2013, I know I certainly made the decision to no longer participate in OCP at the summit in 2013, although my project mandate got split and subsumed around the time of the announcement of Intel donating certain optical interconnects. most of the reasoning behind this is not really germane to this conversation. One most certainly is and that is applicability of OCP projects.
At the time (and nothing has lead me to think otherwise since) the project as a whole was and is geared towards massive scale deployments (or hyper-scale for those with a marketing disposition). In other words it was not meant for the legacy enterprise workload. It is true to say that given some application development, some effort in testing, and a nice tailwind that the enterprise could use OCP hardware, it was certainly defined as an undertaking. However my personally held view and one that can resonate in OCP to varying levels is this.
"ANY entity wanting to use OCP hardware has to take a level of responsibility in testing this equipment for itself, to satisfy itself that the necessary criteria that it needs met are met. If an entity or company EXPECTS this as a defacto provided service then an OEM should be your first port of call for your hardware, or you need to revise the expectation."
The fundamental absolute personally held truths are that if you are not prepared to accept a "degrade in place" infrastructure model. A model that places methodology and implementation of data integrity, at the "software/application" level, think very hard about the hardware you use, think very hard about the needs of IT landscape you are overseeing. and that "OCP is about the deliverance of Open source hardware to a community. It was not about being an OEM"
As for the enterprises, the consumers using OCP, I consider them to this day vital to the effort, more than most people know they have contributed to OCP and they have contributed to moving the rhetoric from a single entity (Facebook) to multiple entities, and perhaps at some junction in the future enabled an ecosystem where community driven software and community driven hardware can be used whatever the scale.
The project for Certification,(at the time this was headed by a representative from the financial industry, I am ashamed to admit I cannot remember his name, and one from the distribution and supply industry, I respect his privacy so he stays nameless) started out of a need, making sure that equipment was built to the specification, that say some from ODM A was the same as ODM B at least on a functional level, and providing a set of guiding or example scripts or harnesses so that sniff tests could be performed. I specified function level as there needs to be a degree of flexibility around a hardware BOM. I remember discussions around expanding that reasoning, but I took myself out of OCP at that time.
I do not hold 20 years of testing in my resume /c.v. I barely register for a quarter of that time, unlike the anonymous testing engineer. I also have not kept up with Open Compute in any material sense. So I could be speaking out of turn here, but it seems doubtful they are trying to make an OEM like certification here, at least publicly.
As for where the labs and facilities are located, it might be wiser to ask the question of "Where was the community effort located at the time?", rather than speculate or inform on whom is running what and the previous history or specific ego's involved. Not because I want to defend individuals, but because sometimes the most obvious answers are the right ones. ask yourself this "If I started a community project where would I try an locate resources, people, projects, "things that need doing and need presence" ?" The rest of whom does what I have no idea or interest in.
On a final note, I would be very interested to learn in the anonymous testing engineer has submitted a proposal, plans, assistance or general help in rectifying what he sees as a problem? I assume he has, few people make a loud cry and stay anonymous without at least trying to fix the problem. I for one would very interested in knowing the message he got back from OCP if indeed he did as I assume discussing things with them.
The great idea about it being open though is people get to judge for themselves if this is something you want. In your way, releasing your results. People do not have to take my view or the 20 years a testing engineers view, you get to choose what you want do with say hopefully a bit more transparency. At least I hope that is what an open community project stands for, because that is what it should stand for. I cannot necessarily have the same hope for OEM's, what was it someone said about the the condition upon which God hath given Liberty?
I am sure the Register can check me out to see if I am kosher, if anybody cares.
Regards
Probie
Biting the hand that feeds IT
