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 that’s 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.”

Even more important about the design is the fact that’s vendor agnostic. “Because we’ve separated the rack from the power, we can collaborate with different manufacturers and create an environment where we have collaboration, but also competition which ultimately drives down the price.”

Fidelity wanted to create a design that was still open for innovation. Customization is everything. “These racks are adjustable in width, depth and height. They come with Bolton accessories that are highly customizable; that’s for aesthetics, security, airflow and cable management.”

An initial full conversion from the EIA to OCP was timed and took a total of 75 minutes. There were a lot of sequencing errors, so they scripted the conversion instructions and it took no more than 45 minutes.

Proceeding to show the audience a live version of the Open Bridge Rack, Obernesser gave am accurate description of its components and importance.

“The most innovative components of the rack are the vertical rails. What’s important about them is that they are dual sided. The conversion kit itself consists of three major components:

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• the electrical distribution (power bus, power shelves
• the wire managers at the front of the rack
• the power bus adapter kit at the end of the rack”

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What’s being contributed today?

According to Obernesser, three files: a specifications document and the 3D schematics to the rack (both for 19″ version and the OCP version).

Level of interest

1. The integrators were interested in one rack that could accommodate two IT standards.
2. Collocation facilities were interested in one rack where they can modify it on the floor for various customer requirements.
3. The consumers were interested in one rack that could respond to the internal capacity demand.

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You can watch Obernesser’s segment below.