Open-hardware solutions provide freedom of choice

19th July 2018

Enaie Azambuja

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Equus Compute Solutions has announced the release of its WHITEBOX OPEN family of servers and storage solutions that are custom, cost-optimised open-hardware platforms. With WHITEBOX OPEN, Equus enables its customers to choose the server and storage configurations that exactly meet their needs, while reducing costs and using flexible open systems management.

The WHITEBOX OPEN platforms are ideal for content delivery network service providers (CDNs), cloud services providers (CSPs), value added resellers (VARs), and large IT enterprises.

The unique WHITEBOX OPEN (WBO) features that enable the open-hardware capabilities of these servers include:

• All WBO servers use OpenBMC, which is the open-source implementation of the Baseboard Management Controller firmware stack that works across heterogeneous systems and can free companies from proprietary system management vendor lock-in.
• WBO servers support the use of LinuxBoot to customise the server BIOS to create unique features, to improve security, and provide a lightning fast boot experience.
• OCP-inspired hardware features are incorporated in WBO servers, including OCP slots that accommodate multi-vendor network cards including 1, 10, 40, 50, 100Gbps Ethernet NICs. The internal OCP storage slots also support NVMe and SSDs for customer applications that demand higher storage performance.
• Utilising OCP networking enables WBO servers to utilise NC-SI (network controller sideband interface) in-band network management communication, removing the need for a separate 1GbE management port and the associated dedicated network that in turn generates cost savings, frees rack space, and reduces rack cabling complexity.

The initial nine WHITEBOX OPEN platforms that use dual Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs range from the R1560 1U 4 bay server to the M2660 2U 4 Node server to the D2760 2U 24 bay with an optional 4 rear 2.5” hot-swap bays and 4 2.5” internal bays.

Each of the WBO server platforms can be customised to exact end-user specifications. GPU-based versions of WBO servers will be available soon.

“Our customers have been asking for cost-optimised open-hardware platforms as the foundation of their software-defined infrastructures,” said Costa Hasapopoulos, President of Equus Compute Solutions.

“WHITEBOX OPEN servers are the ideal high performance solution for demanding applications such as Content Delivery, Cloud Services, Software Defined Storage, Virtualisation, and Analytics/AI. At the same time, these innovative platforms provide benefits of scale and volume, component standardisation, ease of service logistics, and the means to avoid vendor lock-in.”