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Racking Mac Pros

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Re: Racking Mac Pros

#81

Post by lectrick »

exelius wrote: post #19
kaolinite wrote: post #13

Three possible reasons I can think of for doing this over using PCs or Linux servers: 1. Using the same operating system as the developers of the software, plus access to Apple's fantastic imaging libraries. 2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution. 3. The form fac…

The Mac Pro isn't a great value in the datacenter space. It's a single socket server that's limited to 64 GB of RAM. It's not unusual anymore to throw GPUs in rack mount systems; most of them already have the PCIe bandwidth necessary to support 4 big GPUs so it's often just a matter of getting the right riser cards. Compare a Mac Pro to an HP DL360 that can hold 4 8-core Xeons (32 cores total) and over 200GB of RAM a…

The manager of the datacenter kicked in a comment 9 minutes ago or so defending the decision (with facts) at the same level of your comment, if you want to check that out.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#82

Post by skuhn »

makeitsuckless wrote: post #72
skuhn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

I think the problem isn't "unsexy", but service and scale. Buyers of rackmounts require a totally different kind of service. It's not just about the iron, it's a largely separate operation from the consumer PC business. You don't exactly take your Xserve to the Genuis bar... There simply isn't enough demand for Xserves to make it worth the investment for Apple. (As far as I remember, many companies that bought the or…

Also true. Apple is not a server company, and they never will be.

I try to lean on vendor support as little as possible, because it does me no good to point a finger at a vendor when something goes wrong -- I just want it fixed, even if I have to do it in-house. But you still need someone to go back to when push comes to shove, and I just don't see Apple being set up for that kind of support.

In fact, Apple isn't even set up for the kind of purchasing that goes along with it. They're a really old, staid organization when it comes to the sales structure. We wound up going with a VAR rather than direct, simply to improve the experience.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#83

Post by msandford »

skuhn wrote: post #34
msandford wrote: post #27

Seems like you could have gotten higher density going vertical instead of horizontal. It would have been 50% taller (6U instead of 4U) but it could have held 100% more Mac Pros. A Mac Pro is 9.9 inches tall and 6.6 inches in diameter. 9.9 / 1.75 = 5.65 and 6.6 / 1.75 = 3.77 https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/

This was one of our initial ideas for the design, but it boiled down to an airflow concern. There are some products that do this, such as http://www.h-sq.com/products/mprack/index.html If you look at how the airflow works on that shelf, I think you'll see why I don't have confidence in that solution. The air paths to each system seem to be based on wishful thinking. We also didn't need to go that dense after consider…

That product you linked to isn't all that bad, provided that you run with a front plate to actually block off the rest of the cold isle and force the air to flow to the hot isle. But that doesn't seem to be included anywhere. So I agree that it's wishful thinking.

The reality of the power budget makes the most sense really. There's no point in cramming extra units in if you're going to have to rewire for them. Systems engineering!

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#84

Post by jseliger »

kaolinite wrote: post #13

Three possible reasons I can think of for doing this over using PCs or Linux servers: 1. Using the same operating system as the developers of the software, plus access to Apple's fantastic imaging libraries. 2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution. 3. The form fac…

2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution.

I'd actually qualify this ever-so-slightly by saying "It's a good value for money if you need the specific features it offers." Which it evidently does to the OP! But many of us would prefer something with, say, one video card, one mainstream-ish desktop processor, and one mechanical hard drive, an way lower costs.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#86

Post by damon_c »

justinph wrote: post #74

The mechanics of this are pretty neat. But the photography in the article is incredibly distracting. Does every shot have to be at an off-kilter angle? If this is a story about engineering, how about some head-on shots of the engineered thing. I get that the Mac Pro is a beautiful object, but this isn't about the mac. It's about the rack, and none of these photos let me understand it in one shot.

I agree, I think. To me the interesting part about putting Mac Pros in a rack is integrating its relatively unusual approach to air flow.

None of these pictures really show how that is accomplished here. In fact many of them seem to be deliberately hiding that specific aspect.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#87

Post by skuhn »

hashtree wrote: post #62
skuhn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

It was something that I struggled with while writing the article -- you don't want to introduce your solution as "well, this sucks in various ways, but keep reading...". It does boil down to viewing things pragmatically though. The Macs present challenges, but by our math, they're worth it relative to the cost of doing something else and the benefits they provide.

And we actually run a lot of them in production, so I've figured out how to do it and not pull my hair out constantly. That's something I'd like to write on as well, but it would be in a different medium. More technical depth, less pretty pictures.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#88

Post by skuhn »

damon_c wrote: post #86
justinph wrote: post #74

The mechanics of this are pretty neat. But the photography in the article is incredibly distracting. Does every shot have to be at an off-kilter angle? If this is a story about engineering, how about some head-on shots of the engineered thing. I get that the Mac Pro is a beautiful object, but this isn't about the mac. It's about the rack, and none of these photos let me understand it in one shot.

I agree, I think. To me the interesting part about putting Mac Pros in a rack is integrating its relatively unusual approach to air flow. None of these pictures really show how that is accomplished here. In fact many of them seem to be deliberately hiding that specific aspect.

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

I had originally intended there to be a totally disassembled chassis with an airflow overlay on top, but it turned into a lot of work. All of the chassis were already assembled by the time we took the pictures.

The high level view is that air is drawn in to the vent on the front right, which has a separate channel that all 4 Pros sit in. They are sealed in place, so the air has to pass into each Pro's air intake to go anywhere. The other side of the chassis is open to the back of the rack and holds each Pro's exhaust vent.

I'll go through the photos we took and see if there's something that would help to illustrate this better.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#89

Post by kaolinite »

skuhn wrote: post #71
kaolinite wrote: post #13

Three possible reasons I can think of for doing this over using PCs or Linux servers: 1. Using the same operating system as the developers of the software, plus access to Apple's fantastic imaging libraries. 2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution. 3. The form fac…

(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…

Thanks for replying and thanks for the article too - great read with some fantastic photography.

Really interesting to hear how you provision servers, had no idea that OS X Server came with tools for that, but it certainly makes sense. I wouldn't have thought Apple would have put much time or thought into creating tools for large deployments, but glad to hear that they have.

Re: Racking Mac Pros

#90

Post by skuhn »

jseliger wrote: post #84
kaolinite wrote: post #13

Three possible reasons I can think of for doing this over using PCs or Linux servers: 1. Using the same operating system as the developers of the software, plus access to Apple's fantastic imaging libraries. 2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution. 3. The form fac…

2. The Mac Pro, whilst expensive, is good value for money. The dual graphics cards inside it are not cheap at all. As servers with GPUs are fairly niche, this might actually be a cheaper solution. I'd actually qualify this ever-so-slightly by saying "It's a good value for money if you need the specific features it offers." Which it evidently does to the OP! But many of us would prefer something with, say, one video c…

Yes, you're absolutely right. We use conventional Linux servers for application, database and storage for exactly this reason. The Mac Pros are a good value for an image rendering machine, but not for general purpose server stuff (in my opinion).

It's also a bit dear for use as a desktop machine, but it is pretty nice to have one hanging out for on your desk for a few weeks.

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