Facebook Opens Door to New Data Center, Invites the World In

Facebook prefer to extend the idea of community sharing and collaboration to the hardware space, and it's starting with its own new data center, built with a slew of green tech innovations. All of the specs and designs for the center are available online at the Open Compute Project, which Facebook intends to be a hub for exchanging ideas that could trigger energy-efficiency improvements.
Facebook launched the Open Compute Project Thursday in a move that might reshape the IT hardware industry.

The project offers for public use tech specs and data about the custom-engineered technology developed for Facebook's first dedicated data center in Prineville, Ore.

That technology has increased the energy efficiency in the data center by 38 percent while slashing costs by 24 percent, Facebook claims.

The tech specs and mechanical CAD files for the data center's servers, power supplies, server racks, battery backup systems and building design are available at the Open Compute website.

"Overall, what we've done is figured out just one way to do large-scale computing affordably and efficiently, with a particular focus on developing solutions that accommodate our limited resources -- both money and people -- and our unwillingness to sacrifice computing power and efficiency," Facebook spokesperson Jonny Thaw told TechNewsWorld.
That sharing of information will be good for companies with mega-data centers such as Facebook, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), said Jim McGregor, chief technology strategist at In-Stat.

"In a lot of cases, people with very large data centers, like Yahoo, Facebook and Google, have to get custom-built solutions that meet their needs at a reasonable price point," McGregor told TechNewsWorld.

"Facebook's move is a push to say these large data centers need stuff more suited to their requirements in a more standardized way," he added.

"Given Facebook's needs are likely similar to what most companies will want when it comes to client-focused cloud computing, the result is likely better solutions sooner," noted Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Facebook becomes an excellent lab where you can go and see what is, and what is not, working today," Enderle told TechNewsWorld.
Open Compute Server Specs

The Open Compute Project servers have a chassis designed to accommodate a custom motherboard and power supply. It doesn't use screws; it uses quick-release components. The motherboard snaps into place in mounting holes, and the chassis has snap-in rails for the hard drives to slide into the drive bay.

The chassis is designed for easy servicing; it has no sharp corners, no logos or stickers, no front panel and no paint. This saves about six pounds of material per server, according to Facebook's estimates.

Facebook uses motherboards from AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC).

The AMD motherboard is a dual AMD Opteron 61 series socket motherboard with 24 DIMM (double inline memory module) slots. The Intel motherboard is a dual Intel Xeon 5500 or 5600 socket motherboard with 18 DIMM slots.

Both are power-optimized, barebones motherboards that lack many of the features found in traditional boards.

Open Compute uses a 450W single-voltage 12.5V DC self-cooled power supply with a closed frame. The AC/DC power converter includes independent connectors for AC input and DC output as well as a DC input connector for backup voltage. The design enables very high electrical efficiency. Current sharing and parallel operations capabilities have been excluded.
Specs for the Open Compute Data Center

Facebook's data center uses an electrical system with a 48V DC UPS system integrated with a 277V AC server power supply.

It has a high-efficiency cooling system that uses the ambient air and evaporated water. Facebook has gotten rid of the centralized chillers.

The battery cabinet is a stand-alone independent cabinet that provides backup power at 48V DC nominal to a pair of triplet racks. This replaces the traditional inline UPS system normally used in data centers.

Open Compute servers are racked into three adjoining 42U columns. Each column contains 30 servers, for a total of 90 servers. One battery cabinet sits between a pair of triplet racks.

The batteries are sealed 12.5V DC nominal high-rate discharge batteries with a 10-year lifespan, the type commonly used in UPS systems. They are connected in a series of four elements for each group, or string, for a nominal string voltage of 48V DC. There are five strings in parallel in the cabinet.
When you Care Enough to Share the Very Best

Facebook says its Prineville data center has a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 1.073, meaning 93 percent of the energy from the grid makes it into its servers. The EPA-defined industry average is 1.51, Facebook says.

PUE is the ratio of the total amount of power used by a data center to the power delivered to computing equipment. It was created by The Green Grid, a global consortium of IT companies whose members include AMD, Dell (Nasdaq: DELL), EMC (NYSE: EMC), HP (NYSE: HPQ), Intel, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL).

Facebook codeveloped the technology used in its data center with Alfa Tech, AMD, Delta, Intel, Power-One and Quanta. It's working with Dell, HP, Rackspace, Skype, Zynga and other companies on the next generation of technologies.

Facebook is publishing the specs and CAD files for the Open Compute project under the Open Web Foundation Agreement Version 1.0. This gives anyone the right to worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free access to use the information.

"Infrastructure isn't what differentiates us and isn't what makes Facebook's business. Opening the technology means there will be advances that we wouldn't have discovered if we had kept this technology secret," said Thaw.

"If we truly look under the covers of this thing, this is Facebook getting vendors to pay for much of their ecosystem in exchange for advocacy," commented Enderle. "Not really a bad idea -- but this isn't Facebook going into the IT business except as an advocate.

While this approach conceals the real cost of the effort because of vendor involvement, he noted, it "can lead to a vastly better solution, although one tightly focused on Facebook."

Facebook seeking encryption for mobile apps

In response to complaints that a recent announcement of secure connections doesn't go far enough, Facebook said today that it's planning to roll out additional changes that would shield mobile devices and all apps from eavesdropping.

Last month, Facebook began offering the ability for users to turn on HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) to encrypt all communications with the site. However, F-Secure and others have noticed that some apps require users to switch to a regular HTTP connection to use the app, but don't warn users that the switch then becomes permanent.

Asked for comment, a Facebook representative said the company is working to make it so that the switch to unencrypted communications is only temporary and that Facebook is encouraging developers to write apps that support HTTPS.

"We are pushing our third-party developers to begin supporting HTTPS as soon as possible. We've provided an easy way for third-party developers to encourage to do this, and we hope to transition to fully persistent HTTPS soon," the rep said in an e-mail. "However, we recognize that there is currently too much friction in this process and we are iterating on the flow so that the setting will only be temporarily disabled for that session. The account will then return to HTTPS on the next successful log in. We are testing this flow now and hope to launch it in the near future."

Also this week, a computer science professor at Rice University demonstrated that his Motorola Droid X running Android could be eavesdropped on with the right sniffing software. Dan Wallach ran the Wireshark network protocol analyzer and Mallory proxy in his undergraduate security class a few days ago. He found that Facebook sends data (except log-in credentials) in the clear, even though he has his Facebook account set to use HTTPS whenever possible, he wrote on the Freedom to Tinker blog.

Asked for comment, the Facebook representative said the company is working to provide Secure Sockets Layer (used in HTTPS) on mobile platforms in coming months.

"After launching SSL for the site, we are still testing across all Facebook platforms, and hope to provide it as an option for our mobile users in the coming months," the rep said in a statement. "As always, we advise people to use caution when sending or receiving information over unsecured Wi-Fi networks."

Wallach also found that Google Calendar traffic is not encrypted. In response, a Google representative said, "We plan to begin encrypting traffic to Google Calendar on Android in a future maintenance release. When possible, we recommend using encrypted Wi-Fi networks."

Map on Facebook with a few clicks

You know who your Facebook friends are, but can you visualize where they are? You might be surprised when you see "Where My Friends Be?," a Google Maps mashup with all of their locations pinpointed, showing you just how far-flung your friends really are.

We've seen other Facebook/Google Maps mashups before, but this one's different from other friend-mappers. It's fast, it takes just a few seconds to click into, and suddenly it's dropping little pins all over the globe, showing you precisely where your pals reside. Says one of its developers, Ajay Mehta:

"Surprisingly, there aren't a lot of apps like this. There were a few that were very poorly developed and eventually canceled years ago.

They weren't this visual either, most had a lame loading bar or something similar and the mapping was laggy/slow. We have friends pop onto the map in a cool, interactive way (which was the hardest part to hack together)."

Written by college freshmen Ajay Mehta, Wesley Zhao and Dan Shipper, the mashup gives you a quick way to remind yourself that you're not in Kansas anymore, and neither are your friends. Unless, of course, you all live in Kansas.

The enthusiasm of these frosh is infectious. Future Zuckerbergs?

Apple speeds up MacBook Pro

Apple on Thursday morning unveiled a new line of high-end laptop computers that's about twice as fast as the older generation, according to the company.

The MacBook Pro laptops get a speed boost from faster Intel processors, which can reach "Turbo Boost" speeds of 3.4 gigahertz. In nongeek speak, that means the computers can complete 3.4 billion calculations per second.

Apple says it's using the "fastest dual-core processor available."

The laptops also are the first computers to feature Intel and Apple's "Thunderbolt" technology, which is a new way to connect cameras, camcorders and the link to the computer -- an alternative to USB ports, which are ubiquitous today.

Apple says these new ports are much faster than existing alternatives.

"Ultrafast and ultraflexible, the Thunderbolt pipeline is more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0, and it offers unprecedented expansion capabilities. It changes what you can do on a notebook," Apple says in its advertising materials.

The new laptops also have USB and FireWire connections.

The MacBook Pro computers -- some of the most expensive laptops on the market -- start at $1,200 for a 13-inch model and go up to $2,500 for a computer with a 17-inch screen, when measured diagonally.

The computers come with Intel's Core i5 and Core i7 dual-core processors. Their speeds range from 2.0 to 2.7 gigahertz but can jump to 3.4 gigahertz, the company says. Apple claims these processors make the new MacBook Pro twice as fast at processing data and three times as fast at rendering images.

Another new feature of the laptops -- which, from photos, look almost identical to their predecessors -- is the addition of a FaceTime video camera. This will allow MacBook Pro users to conduct video chats with people on mobile phones and iPods that support Apple's FaceTime video chat app, which is similar to Skype. Previously, iPhone 4 FaceTime users could only chat with each other -- not with people who were using laptops.

"FaceTime for Mac makes it easy to talk, smile and laugh with friends and family on their iPhone 4, iPod touch or Mac," Apple says in an ad for its FaceTime app for the Mac, which costs 99 cents.

Some Apple fans were initially disappointed by the specs of the new laptops.

"I have to say it looks like they just wanted to get this out of the way and move on to the actual main event, the iPad 2. iPad is the future," one commenter wrote on the blog Apple Insider.

Another complained that Apple updated the MacBook Pro series instead of the MacBook Air, which is a lighter laptop that boots up instantly.

"I'm sure many will be thrilled by the speed, but I'm majorly disappointed. ... My hopes for a MacBook Pro Air have been dashed.... Maybe next year ...," another commenter on that blog wrote.

Others weren't wowed by the computers' screen resolution.

"Reeeaaallly disappointed with the 1280x800 resolution? Why??" wrote a commenter on The Unofficial Apple Weblog, or TUAW.

Obama at dinner with Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg

A photo released by the White House on Friday shows Apple CEO Steve Jobs, along with other tech luminaries, raising a toast with President Barack Obama at a dinner Thursday night in San Francisco.

The photo, of a private dinner during the President's visit to California, comes as tabloid reports, some featuring alleged photos of Jobs, have questioned the Apple leader's health.

In the photo, Jobs and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg flank Obama during the toast. Wearing his trademark black mock turtleneck shirt, Jobs is photographed from behind.

Jobs was diagnosed with cancer in 2003. He took a six-month leave of absence in 2009, during which he was reported to have had a liver transplant.

He began an indefinite medical leave of absence on January 17.

This week, a supermarket tabloid and a gossip website ran unconfirmed reports suggesting that his health was declining.

Neither Apple nor Jobs, or anyone directly familiar with his health care, have commented publicly on the reason for his leave or the most recent rumors.

Jobs had kept a low profile since unveiling a new line of MacBook laptops in October.

Obama's meeting with the tech luminaries was intended to discuss innovation and spurring job growth.

Also worth noting: Zuckerberg appears to have shed his go-to hooded sweatshirt look for his dinner with the leader of the free world.

Others attending the dinner included Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

Also, Stanford University President John Hennessy, Genentech CEO Art Levinson, Steve Westly, founder of The Westly Group and John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of the technology bosses advising President ObamaUS President Barack Obama has met Silicon Valley bosses, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Apple's Steve Jobs and Google chief executive Eric Schmidt were also present at the private get-together in California. The president had been seeking the views of technology leaders as he works to turn around his country's ailing economy. Mr Obama has said he wants to encourage American businesses to invest more money in innovation. Among those meeting the president were the bosses of Twitter, Yahoo and Oracle.

Apple's chief executive Steve Jobs was in attendance, despite media reports that his health had taken a turn for the worse. US newspaper the National Enquirer published pictures, said to be of Mr Jobs, looking emaciated. He is currently on his third medical leave of absence from Apple since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2004. Thursday's meeting with the president was a private event, hosted by venture capitalist John Doerr.

Fecebook With HTTPS Connections

How important is your Facebook account? Do you consider it as important as, say, your bank account? If you happen to feel this way about Facebook, then you'll like the latest news regarding the social network service.

Earlier this week, Facebook rolled out a new feature which allows users to connect with a HTTPS connection.

What is a HTTPS connection?

Basically it's an encrypted link, which is very similar to what most banks provide their customers. The connection type will be able to curb the problems with "sidejacking". Which is the act of cracking into connections over open Wi-Fi networks.

Considering many people keep up with their social networking in public places, this could be a huge privacy move for some users. For those who travel on a consistent basis, this is a huge improvement.

This security feature is added to a long list of updates Facebook has rolled out recently. With one such featured being the "social authentication" feature. This makes it so users have to verify photos of their friends in order to verify their account status.

It's perhaps coincidence, or maybe not, that this feature has released the day after an API error was used to hack into Mark Zuckerberg's account page. The error has been patched, alongside with the release of the HTTPS feature.

The update has also released a day before the Data Privacy Day. Which is an international time to boost awareness for data privacy.

With HTTPS, Facebook continues to try and improve its security image. Many people have criticized them through the years for not protecting users' security and privacy enough. This update is certainly taking a step in the right direction to help boost their image.