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Racking Mac Pros

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Re: Racking Mac Pros

#61

Post by sp332 »

bane wrote: post #29

It's really kind of mind-boggling that Apple makes and sells the Pro, which can be upgraded to a really nice high performance GPU workstation, but then doesn't sell the same hardware in rack mountable forms for clusterable computing. I'm sure they've performed some kind of market analysis for this, but there's enough differences between OSX and Linux solutions that for people who use HPC solutions (a growing market)…

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

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#62

Post by hashtree »

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…

This should be at the top of the article to hush folks like myself who might be curious from the get go why another approach wasn't taken and why the Mac Pros were selected. Thanks for the insight as to the why.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#63

Post by exelius »

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…

So for $56k USD you get a system that is roughly twice as fast as the 4x Mac Pro solution... but also costs twice as much? The numbers actually don't work out too badly. At least, better than I would have initially assumed. Density is really the only area where the 4x Mac Pro solution loses hands down.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#64

Post by skuhn »

bane wrote: post #29

It's really kind of mind-boggling that Apple makes and sells the Pro, which can be upgraded to a really nice high performance GPU workstation, but then doesn't sell the same hardware in rack mountable forms for clusterable computing. I'm sure they've performed some kind of market analysis for this, but there's enough differences between OSX and Linux solutions that for people who use HPC solutions (a growing market)…

(I'm the datacenter manager at imgix, and wrote this post)

It is pretty frustrating. We've joked around about how Apple will probably announce a new Xserve at WWDC next month, now that we've done the work to get the Pros happy in production.

I don't really see them re-entering this space though. Apple already has a LOT of businesses that they are clearly bored with. iPods, the Thunderbolt Display, their mice, and so on. They seem to be unable to get engineering motivation behind "unsexy" products, which I definitely think a new Xserve would classify as.

Plus, just making it rack mountable wouldn't necessarily cover our use case. What if it didn't have GPUs, or couldn't fit the ones we wanted? A lot of server class GPUs can't fit in a 1U enclosure, they need 1.5U or 2U chassis for airflow and heatsinks and whatnot.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#65

Post by skuhn »

sp332 wrote: post #61
bane wrote: post #29

It's really kind of mind-boggling that Apple makes and sells the Pro, which can be upgraded to a really nice high performance GPU workstation, but then doesn't sell the same hardware in rack mountable forms for clusterable computing. I'm sure they've performed some kind of market analysis for this, but there's enough differences between OSX and Linux solutions that for people who use HPC solutions (a growing market)…

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 wanted to be. 44 of 48 switch ports utilized, almost all CDU outlets utilized, and ~13kW out of 14kW utilized under load.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#66

Post by [deleted] »

mozumder wrote: post #47
exelius wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right; which is why I was surprised that OS X stacks up as favorably as it does. But I wouldn't call it a great value since it's still much more expensive than a traditional rack mount setup. From a density perspective it's really not bad at all, which is a testament to how well-engineered the Mac Pro is.

I'd say it's not even as expensive as something like IBM's 4-socket rack servers like the x3850 X6.

[deleted]

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#67

Post by mozumder »

exelius wrote: post #54
mozumder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's not even as expensive as something like IBM's 4-socket rack servers like the x3850 X6.

Yeah, except IBM's x86 hardware has always been stupid expensive for no good reason other than it's IBM. And didn't they spin off their xSeries server business to Lenovo once the market settled on HP systems that cost half what IBM's did?

Even an HP 4 socket system like the DL980 G7 is going to be as expensive.

None of these servers are going to be cheap.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#68

Post by grecy »

cmurf wrote: post #35
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…

Unfortunate for many who wish otherwise, it's very clearly a market they do not remotely care about.

I think the opposite is true. They made the Rack mountable xServe for almost a decade.

The fact they discontinued it shows that it's clearly not a market - customers didn't want it in enough volume to justify the product.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#69

Post by pjungwir »

Just last night I was asking why with so many mobile app companies no one is building their server side in Objective C. Wouldn't that have the same personnel advantages as Node.js (supposedly) offers the web world? I haven't looked to see if there is a decent Objective C web framework, but if it's just an API I guess you don't need too much.

I mean I can think of lots of reasons to stick with Rails/whatever (and that's what I'd do), but I'm surprised it is quite so unheard of. You'd get much better performance. Skipping garbage collection with ARC would be awesome. Coding time is still pretty fast, and it's not as unsafe as C/C++.

Just a crazy idea for anyone about to start a mobile app company. :-)

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#70

Post by mozumder »

Sanddancer wrote: post #58
mozumder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, they're fitting 4 sockets and 8 GPUS in the space that's normally used by 4 sockets only. Also, if you're trying to sync raw images between OS X clients and the cloud, then you're going to need OS X servers in the cloud. It'll greatly complicate the clients workflow if they can't use their built in raw converters.

At the scale imgix is going for, and given they're already doing a lot of custom architecture work, something like Supermicro's GPGPU chassis [1] would allow the same server density, plus use GPUs and CPUs that are 1-2 generations ahead of Apple's offerings. Regarding raw images, you don't need OS X servers to do that, just programs that can read the raw formats. That could be a windows box, or an OpenCL-enabled prog…

Every raw image processor is different. You could use a different raw processor (which would complicate a client workflow), but the results would look different from the native OS X client raw image processor.

If you want a solution that exactly matches OS X client, you need OS X.

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