This week was the regional Open Compute Project Summit in Amsterdam. Gigabyte’s server division has been getting in the OCP server business as we covered in Expanded Gigabyte RACKLUTION-OP Range for Hyperscaled Data Centers. At the OCP 2018 regional summit, Gigabyte unveiled a number of new products. We wanted to discuss some of Gigabyte’s Intel Xeon Scalable compute nodes and how they fit into OCP V1.0 or V2.0 racks. These are part of the company’s Racklution-OP line of products designed for the OCP ecosystem.
Gigabyte T022 OCP Compute Nodes
The Gigabyte T022 series of OCP compute nodes include the Gigabyte T022-C20, T022-C21, and T022-C22. All three are 2OU compute nodes featuring dual Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs, six-channel memory with 8 DIMMs per socket and 16 DIMMs per node. We highlighted that this may be for future Intel Optane Persistent Memory configurations. All three of the nodes also support 10Gbase-T Ethernet via Intel X550. For OCP shops, usually we see SFP+/ SFP28 but in this case, it makes sense as the 10Gbase-T NICs are the primary network interfaces instead of 1GbE. There is also a management LAN port on each node for OOB Explaining the Baseboard Management Controller or BMC access. For additional expansion, each node has an OCP mezzanine slot (x16) and two half-length low profile PCIe slots. With this common platform, Gigabyte has three variants that offer different storage options.
Here is a quick breakdown of the storage:
- Gigabyte T022-C20: 2x 2.5″ U.2 NVMe plus 2x 2.5″ SATA front hot swap, 4x 2.5″ U.2 NVMe internal
- Gigabyte T022-C21: 2x 2.5″ U.2 NVMe plus 2x 2.5″ SATA front hot swap
- Gigabyte T022-C22: 4x 2.5″ U.2 NVMe or SATA plus 4x internal NVMe U.2 drives
The basic premise here is a common compute node, with a few different storage options, mainly centered around U.2 NVMe drives.
Gigabyte Racklution-OP Supporting OCP Version 1.0 and 2.0 Racks
Along with these nodes, Gigabyte has trays to allow them to work in either OCP Version 1.0 or 2.0 racks. The OCP Version 1.0 tray is the Gigabyte TO20-BT1 and the OCP Version 2.0 is the Gigabyte T021-BT0.
For those that are not familiar with the OCP Version 1.0 or 2.0 rack differences, a lot of it comes down to power distribution. The OCP Version 1.0 racks have three bus-bars that feed power from centralized power supplies to nodes. OPC Verison 2.0 racks have a single bus bar.
The OCP Version 1.0 design has more power capacity for higher-power applications.
Final Words
The OCP space is booming right now with more organizations looking to adopt the 21″ rack form factors as the designs get easier to implement. One of the biggest hurdles the next-level of customers will need to overcome is that most of the world’s existing data center space is built around 19″ racks. 21″ racks are not compatible with the older rack standard. Gigabyte is making a major push into the OCP market offering regular new product introductions in their Racklution-OP line.
