Studying and developing on the Open Rack standard since its early stages, GIGABYTE is now producing datacenter racks and nodes that can outperform most of today's solutions designed according to the traditional approach. Several clearly distinguishable concepts and features are behind this achievement that has already led several datacenters around the world to identify GIGABYTE's systems as the best solution for their infrastructure:

Unlike the traditional approach where each system fitted into the rack is a full featured server, with GIGABYTE's Open Rack the redundant functions between all the different rack-mount systems are removed and consolidated into the rack itself. This leaves primary rack-mounts that serve a main function only, such as pure computing, storage, or computing/storage hybrids, and support modules providing the previously redundant functions. Those support modules, all located at the rear of the rack, include:

Thanks to the consolidation of the rack's power supplies into a single module that is cooled and managed more efficiently than individual power supplies integrated into each rack-mount, the total energy consumption of an Open Rack is significantly lower than a traditional rack. The table below shows the average power savings realized with GIGABYTE's Open Rack compared to a comparable traditional rack fitted with 1U rack-mounts, both equipped with Intel Xeon E5-2600 processors:

Achieved through a real-time on-demand power delivery adjusted to each individual rack-mount, these power savings number make particular sense in many cloud applications where the resource demand fluctuations seldom lead to loadings above 50%. Yet in case of peak demands, GIGABYTE Open Rack solution is still capable of delivering significant energy savings nearing 10% compared to traditional racks.

As mentioned above, all the power supply, cooling, switching and monitoring devices disappear from the rack-mounts, and in this way their surface can be fully available to accommodate hardware serving their primary function. The space efficiency is therefore greatly increased within the nodes, without decreasing their actual dimension compared to traditional racks.

You can check our different nodes available in the "Nodes" tab.

With its fully modular design, GIGABYTE's Open Rack solution is also ready for the growth and evolution of the datacenter. Each module is available individually and can be ordered later in time to add capacity to the existing infrastructure. With such flexibility, our customers can setup a configuration matching the current need of their application, and as time passes they are able to complete, scale and upgrade their park as the demand for their service develops. Moreover, GIGABYTE's Open Rack is based on the standard 19" rack design, which means existing racks in a datacenter can receive the internal Open Rack structure, and non-Open Rack rack-mounts can also fit into an Open Rack cabinet. The implementation of the Open Rack standard can therefore happen without any major overhaul of an existing datacenter's design and parameters.

Once again, it is thanks to its modular design that GIGABYTE's Open Rack can be easily assembled and handled. All the modules can be handled by a single operator, without the help of elevating tools usually required for 2U or thicker rack-mounts. Moreover, each module is designed with as few screws as possible, and all of them are easily swappable for the smoothest daily handling possible.