AMAX's [SMART] DC Data Center Manager Breaks Barrier of Entry for OCP and Real Power Savings

Fremont, California, March 9, 2016 (Newswire.com) - AMAX, a leading provider of cloud computing solutions for the modern data center, announced today its solution to closing the gap between the power efficiency and cost savings of OCP as promised by Facebook, and the ability for the industry at large to take advantage of these benefits. AMAX will be standardizing its [SMART] DC Data Center Manager software on its OCP-inspired One Platform solution, creating a true data-center ready platform. One Platform marries the benefits of OCP with Tier-1 manageability, and is delivered fully-integrated and ready to drop into any data center.

​Facebook has long championed OCP (hardware represented by the Open Compute Project) as their in-house solution for building and scaling their own data centers. The revolutionary “Open Rack” spec featured both AC and DC inputs as well as power supplies in the rack rather than individual servers. Using this design, Facebook claims to have saved 38% in power efficiency and over $2 billion since the platform’s inception.

"We saw its immense promise, but also the struggles of companies who discovered in PoC that it required a lot of in-house development resources, the management features were weak and overall, the efficiency from just the hardware if you weren't hyperscale just wasn't significant enough to move the needle. We sought to create a solution that took the 'project' out of OCP, and made it an enterprise-grade, ready-to-consume 'product' that could play nice with whatever else you have in your data center," said Dr. Rene Meyer, Director of Product Development, AMAX.

Rene Meyer, Director of Product Development

Since then, OCP has spread to include traditional server architectures, networking platforms and industry-specific rack-level solutions. While various industries including financial, telecom, retail, gaming, cloud services, pharmaceutical and many others looked to OCP as the future of their data centers, many have struggled to move past proof of concept and into mass adoption. 

The reasons for this vary: 

· Facebook evangelizes a DIY (Do It Yourself) development approach that many companies can not or do not want to invest.​

·There are challenges integrating OCP into existing data centers.

· OCP lacks the robust management features of leading server technologies.

· The savings originally reported by Facebook are in large part the result of having planned and built their data center operations from the ground up, a luxury most companies do not have.

OCP has simply not been ready for mass mid-market consumption.

Enter AMAX’s One Platform. With these barriers to entry in mind, AMAX sought to design a truly data-center ready solution that would allow companies access to key benefits of OCP including power savings, its modular and flexible design, ease of maintenance, and overall TCO, and combine it with power/resource management features that data centers have come to expect from hardware. All this must be packaged in a way that minimizes in-house development resource requirements and maximizes time to market and return on investment.

“AMAX was an official OCP Solutions Provider from the beginning,” said Dr. Rene Meyer, Director of Product Development, AMAX. “We saw its immense promise, but also the struggles of companies who discovered in PoC that it required a lot of in-house development resources, the management features were weak and overall, the efficiency from just the hardware if you weren’t hyperscale just wasn’t significant enough to move the needle. We sought to create a solution that took the ‘project’ out of OCP, and made it an enterprise-grade, ready-to-consume ‘product’ that could play nice with whatever else you have in your data center.”

AMAX One Platform is based on the Open Rack v2 spec and features a configurable power shelf capable of different power modes, including a Data Integrity Mode featuring battery back up for maximum power efficiency and high availability, and a Max Power Mode featuring a power envelope of up to 24kW. It was designed for versatility, serving as a modular Scalable Unit that could be easily configured based on resource requirements for different applications including OpenStack, Hadoop/Spark, Ceph Storage or HPC workloads.

In addition, the bundling of AMAX’s [SMART]DC Data Center Manager software gives One Platform more robust and feature rich Tier-1 like management capabilities compared to script-based IPMI or Facebook’s non-standardized OpenBMC solution. [SMART]DC features intelligent policy-based resource/power management capabilities orchestrated through a user-friendly GUI. Key features of [SMART]DC include:

·         Real-Time Power and Thermal Data

·         Integrated Health Monitoring

·         Identify Dead or Under-Utilized Servers

·         Intelligent Power & Battery Back Up Management

·         Policy-Based Power Capping

·         Efficiency Planning through Data Trends

·         Policy-Based Alerts

·         Cross Platform Out of Band Management

As an out of band DCIM solution, [SMART]DC is capable of client-less management of hardware platforms across all major server vendors, including Dell, HP, IBM/Lenovo, Supermicro, Quanta, etc.  The software’s cross platform compatibility and manageability allows AMAX solutions to be easily integrated into existing data center operations while managing a heterogeneous data center. 

[SMART]DC can be bundled with all AMAX platforms. These include AMAX’s [SMART] OCP Solutions line featuring One Platform and Centurion—the traditional 19” platform based on the Decathlete spec—as well as all of AMAX’s non-OCP platforms including CB3 Data Center Building Blocks, PHAT Data, CloudMax and AMAX Deep Learning series.  It can be hosted on an SDN switch, server node or small-form factor appliance.

AMAX will be exhibiting at Booth #C6 at OCP Summit on March 9-10th at the San Jose Convention Center. AMAX will also have a live [SMART]DC “Lights Out” Power Management demo in Intel’s booth (#210B) throughout the Summit. For those interested in a solution overview and face to face opportunity with [SMART]DC lead developer, Dr. Rene Meyer, he will be giving a Stage Talk in the Expo Hall at 1pm on Thursday, March 10th.  

About AMAX

AMAX is a global leader in application-tailored Data Center, HPC and OEM Solutions. Recognized for several industry awards, including the Best of VMWorld and Intel Server Innovation Award for the CloudMax Converged Cloud Infrastructure, AMAX aims to provide cutting edge solutions to improve efficiency and cut costs for the modern data center. Founded in 1979 and headquartered in Silicon Valley (with additional locations in China and Ireland) AMAX is a full service technology solutions provider specializing in innovative server-to-rack level solutions developed for Data Center, HPC, Cloud and Big Data applications.

From white box server-to-rack integration, High Performance Deep Learning Platforms or converged infrastructure solutions featuring OpenStack, Open Compute and SDN, to a comprehensive menu of professional services, AMAX is the full-service partner you need to help modernize your IT operations. To learn more, Contact AMAX to request a quote.