Facebook has kicked off construction of its fifth mega data center in Fort Worth, Texas. The new site will join the other major Facebook data centers located in Prineville (Oregon), Forest City (North Carolina), Lulea (Sweden), and Altoona (Iowa).
The new Fort Worth data center will feature the latest Open Compute Project hardware designs — including Yosemite, Wedge, and 6-pack — making it one of the most advanced data centers in the world.
Notably, the data center will powered by 100% renewable energy, thanks a 200 MW contract for new wind energy that Facebook has arranged with Citigroup Energy, Alterra Power Corporation, and Starwood Energy Group.
The new data center will be cooled using outdoor air instead of energy-intensive air conditioners, even during the hot summers in Texas.
Capital investment is projected to exceed $500 million within 5 years, including building construction costs and data center equipment.
https://www.facebook.com/FortWorthDataCenter
In February, Facebook unveiled its “6-Pack” open modular switch platform designed for the flexibility, efficiency, and scale required in its massive data centers. The architecture allows Facebook to build different size switches using common line card and fabric card building blocks.
Last year, Facebook disclosed the specification of its top-of-rack network switch (code-named “Wedge”) and a Linux-based operating system for that switch (code-named “FBOSS”). It then described the modular network architecture it will use for scaling operations. The new 6-pack switch will serve as the core of this fabric.
In an engineering blog posting, Facebook said the 6-pack switch uses Wedge as its basic building block: it is a full mesh non-blocking two-stage switch that includes 12 independent switching elements. Each independent element can switch 1.28Tbps.
Facebook is currently building two configurations: One configuration exposes 16x40GE ports to the front and 640G (16x40GE) to the back, and the other is used for aggregation and exposes all 1.28T to the back. Each element runs its own operating system on the local server and is completely independent, from the switching aspects to the low-level board control and cooling system. Facebook said the advantage of this unique dual backplane design is the ability to modify any part of the system with no system-level impact, software or hardware.
