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Racking Mac Pros

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Re: Racking Mac Pros

#101

Post by sp332 »

skuhn wrote: post #65
sp332 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sonnet sells this workaround that puts 2 Mac Pros in 4U http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix, and wrote this post) Yep, there are lots of other options out there. I considered at least 4 or 5 off-the-shelf ones before committing to designing and building our own. In Sonnet's case, it is super expensive and no denser than this: http://mk1manufacturing.com/store/cart.php?m=product_detail&... We're able to achieve twice that density, which put it right on target with where I…

Yeah I saw it was half the density. Too bad they're so expensive. On the plus side... you can actually buy them :)

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#102

Post by 15155 »

skuhn wrote: post #28
mmastrac wrote: post #2

Building on OSX seems like it must add a ton of complexity to your workflow, despite getting access to some of Apple's GPU-optimized image code. Then again, it's often cheaper to throw silicon at problems than people. If you have in-house expertise in Apple's graphics libraries, that might be cheaper than hiring someone who could write the whole thing to run under a lower-cost Linux solution. Alternatively, OS X migh…

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix and wrote this post) From a pure hardware perspective, I would love to move this part of the service to Linux systems with GPUs. I spent some time evaluating this before we committed to the Mac Pro solution -- built some prototype hardware and did a cost analysis. It just wasn't the right move, because of the engineering cost for us. OS X's graphics pipeline is really strong, and…

> who may be prone to pass on theories of how things work rather than facts

This is the biggest nightmare about working with OS X, to me.

Any forum discussion you find on Macrumors or the Apple forums is hilariously misguided with pathetically bad "theories" on why something isn't working and how to fix it.

"Zap the PRAM!" can be found in any/every thread, and that's a mild example.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#104

Post by [deleted] »

ansible wrote: post #55
exelius wrote: post #5

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. And to those questioning "Why would you use such expensive systems when commodity hardware is just as fast at half the price?" I would reply that the Mac Pro isn't all that expensive compared to most rack mount servers. If you're talking about a difference of $2000 per server, even acro…

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. If they are GPU limited... A full 4U rack of Mac Pros is 8 AMD Fire GPUs (6GB VRAM each), 256GB main RAM, 48 2.7GHz Xeon cores (using the 12-core option), and 4TB of SSD. 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt2. Let's set aside differences in GPU and processor performance; we're just looking at t…

[deleted]

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#105

Post by skuhn »

ansible wrote: post #55
exelius wrote: post #5

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. And to those questioning "Why would you use such expensive systems when commodity hardware is just as fast at half the price?" I would reply that the Mac Pro isn't all that expensive compared to most rack mount servers. If you're talking about a difference of $2000 per server, even acro…

This is interesting -- they actually manage to get greater density out of this setup than many traditional rack mount systems offer. If they are GPU limited... A full 4U rack of Mac Pros is 8 AMD Fire GPUs (6GB VRAM each), 256GB main RAM, 48 2.7GHz Xeon cores (using the 12-core option), and 4TB of SSD. 10G Ethernet via Thunderbolt2. Let's set aside differences in GPU and processor performance; we're just looking at t…

The Tesla K80 didn't exist when I started this project, but to do some quick math:

K80 gflop/s: 8740 2x FirePro D500 gflop/s: 3500

K80 runs about $4900 a card, whereas the entire Mac Pro (list price) is $4000. So it's 2.5x the performance at easily 2x the cost if not more.

You're right that there is a cost advantage to going with commodity server hardware, but I don't think it's as great as most people think in this particular case. It's also far from free for us to do the necessary engineering work, and not just in terms of money. It would basically mean pressing pause on feature development at a crucial time in the company's life, and that just isn't the right move.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#107

Post by skuhn »

chiph wrote: post #92
skuhn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix, and I wrote this article) 1. Yeah, the OS X graphics pipeline is at the heart of our desire to use Macs in production. It's also pretty sweet to be able to prototype features in Quartz Composer, and use this whole ecosystem of tools that straight up don't exist on Linux. 2. I mentioned this elsewhere already, but it is actually a pretty good value. The chassis itself is not a ter…

What's the noise level like with these machines? The typical pizza-box servers aren't exactly quiet.

They're pretty much silent relative to datacenter stuff.

One of the goals of the next revision is to have LED power indicators (maybe plugged in to the front USB ports) or LCD panels built into the front of the chassis. Right now you actually can't tell that the rack is powered on unless you walk to the hot aisle and look at the power readouts, it's that quiet.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#108

Post by istvan__ »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #51
mozumder wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another is that Macs have their own raw image convertors, and if you're trying to sync photos to the cloud with raw files, and you want to match images with mac users, you're going to need OS X in the cloud. If you don't have OS X in the cloud, then you're going to have to write your own raw image converter, and that means you can't sync with the OS X client native raw converter, complicating the workflow...

You're violating OSX license terms if you attempt to run OSX "in the cloud". That was the first idea I wanted to explore when the project was brought up, but for various legal reasons, we just bought the hardware. (Sidenote: Nothing is more frustrating than sitting in a technical meeting where an attorney has joined in, and explains you can't do something legally even though its the perfect technical solution). Not t…

Yes you can.

http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/

"(iii) to install, use and run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple Software within virtual operating system environments on each Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the Apple Software, for purposes of: (a) software development; (b) testing during software development; (c) using OS X Server; or (d) personal, non-commercial use."

might be different for each release though

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#109

Post by rsync »

I have two conflicting responses to what I am seeing here ...

First, this is awesome. Just like I want to live in a world where people are paying picodollars for cloud storage[1], I also want to live in a world where a bunch of mac pro cylinders are racked up in a datacenter. Very cool.

Second, this is complete silliness. I'm not going to go down the rabbithole of flops per dollar, but there is no way that you can't build a hackintosh 1U with dual cpus and multiple GPUs and not come out big money ahead. Whatever management overhead gets added by playing the hackintosh cat and mouse is certainly less than building new things out of sheet metal.

Let me say one other thing: right around mid 2000 was when certain companies started selling fancy third-party rack chassis gizmos for the Sun e4500, which was the cadillac of datacenter servers at the time. Huge specs on paper, way underpowered for the money they cost ($250k+) and the epitome of Suns brand-value. And there were suddenly new and fancy ways to rack and roll them.

This reminds me a lot of that time, and that time didn't last long...

[1] Our esteemed competitor, tarsnap.

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