The following is a brief profile of Arctic Circle, currently using Wiwynn products, with local delivery and support from Circle B, a Wiwynn partner in Europe.
Profile
Arctic Circle Data Center (ACDC) is a new cloud service provider based in Mo i Rana, Norway. Started in 2014 by Mo Industrial Park (MIP), they saw Norway’s abundant hydroelectric power as a strong attraction for companies looking for reliable and relatively inexpensive data centre and cloud infrastructure services.
ACDC is in the process of establishing a data centre campus, which would house a variety of companies, from notable public cloud providers to colocation to the growing blockchain players.
Why have they started using OCP?
The executive team has deep roots in open source and believes that openness always wins. They wanted to use open source building blocks as a foundation for their infrastructure.
As Øyvind Bakksjø stated, “while you may find a proprietary solution that is mature and has many features, if you can get a community behind an open source project it becomes a force which is unstoppable.” What has happened with open source software is happening now with OCP and open hardware.
What OCP Solutions are they currently using?
They have currently deployed Open Rack v1 and v2 with 2S Intel Xeon server sleds and the 30 drive JBOD storage appliances. In 2018 they will also be deploying Lightning storage appliance with direct attach PCIe storage devices. They currently use Wiwynn products with local delivery and support from Circle B (https://circleb.eu/), a Wiwynn partner in Europe.
One of the more noticeable benefits they’ve experienced while using OCP is the serviceability. Since everything in the OpenRack design is front accessible, it is quite easy to deploy and maintain.
What software or applications are they running on OCP?
They are currently running OpenStack and will be running containers in the near future (i.e. Kubernetes).
What are some of the challenges they have experienced moving to OCP?
Øyvind highlighted a few areas which could be addressed to make the OCP experience more smooth going forward. One challenge, which is unique to only a handful of countries in Europe, is the power distribution network within Norway. This requires some deployment adjustments which the team is exploring with a few OCP members focused on power shelves.
Other challenges include the need for lead-time for smaller quantities to be improved, as well as expanding the approved vendor lists (AVL’s) for some products. And he stressed the need for suppliers to ensure products are released to market soon after the specification is approved.
What are the plans for Arctic Circle moving forward?
It’s an exciting time for Arctic Circle as they are launching a new IaaS and PaaS Cloud Service, arcticcloud.com. The plan for 2018 includes deployment of OCP-based NVMe storage solutions, and the evaluation of AMD servers and GPU-based computing.
Contact information:
Øyvind Bakksjø
CTO, Arctic Circle Data Center
+47 92283522
https://www.linkedin.com/in/backsea/
https://www.arcticcircledc.com/
See Wiwynn at the upcoming OCP US Summit at Booth A15!