4 ms·
Before the thread becomes cluttered with people suggesting alternatives or questioning why you wouldn't just run <insert manufacturer, OS, etc>, the person that
by jurre 14y ago
Before the thread becomes cluttered with people suggesting alternatives or questioning why you wouldn't just run <insert manufacturer, OS, etc>, the person that did this replied the following:
simbimbo says:
December 9, 2012 at 11:03 am
Thanks for the great write up Hack A Day. I would like to answer some of the questions posted. @Geebles these machines all run SSD’s and I ordered them with AppleCare, so I hope to never have to change a drive ;-)
As for the reason I built this.. Well, I guess I’m just like a challenge ;-), but seriously, the company I work for has a need to have large numbers of machines to build and test the software we make.
There were plenty of discussions of Virtual environments and other “Bare Motherboard”/Google Datacenter-type solutions, but the fact is, the Apple EULA requires that Mac OS X run on Apple Hardware, since we are a software company we adhere to these rules without exception. These Mac Machines all run OS X in a NetBooted environment. We require Mac OS X because the products we make support Windows, Linux and Mac so we have data centers with thousands of machines configured with all 3 OS’s running constant build and test operations 24 hours a day 365 days a year.
As for device failure, we treat these machines like pixels in a very large display, if a few fail, it’s ok, the management software disables them until we can switch them out. This approach allows us to continue our operations regardless of machine failures.
@bitbass I tried the vertical approach, but manufacturing the required plenum to keep the air clean to the rear machines cost too much for this project, but it’s not off the table for the next rack
@Kris Lee When I open the door I can literally watch the machine temps go up, but I can keep it open for 15-20 minutes before the core temps reach 180F
@Adam Ahhh.. Nope, you can’t have my job ;-)
- shardling 14y agoI believe Mozilla has large racks of mac Minis for testing Firefox on. (Same issue, I believe -- to support multiple platforms on the same hardware, you need something that's legal to run OSX on.) e: Ah, according to [this article](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/mozillas-new-datacenter/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/05/mozillas-new-da...) they have 500 Minis in their data center.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- monochromatic 14y ago> these machines all run SSD’s . . . so I hope to never have to change a drive lol
- sliverstorm 14y agoTry actually contributing.
- monochromatic 14y agoPointing out a ridiculous statement is contributing. And it is ridiculous. See, e.g., http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid...
- sliverstorm 14y agoQuoting the statement and captioning it with "lol" is not contributing, at least not on HN. It might have been contributing if you included the codinghorror link up front. In response to said link, I will observe that it was written 1.5 years ago, and SSDs have been progressing very rapidly in both performance and reliability.
- rxooo 14y agolol
- obstacle1 14y agoYou ignored the last clause of the sentence. The author doesn't plan to not replace drives because they are SSDs, rather because they are covered by AppleCare.
- monochromatic 14y agoYou're right that that does make the assertion somewhat less ridiculous. But it still sounds like he's saying that he expects the SSDs to be more reliable than regular drives.
- hapless 14y agoSomeone didn't finish his homework. The legal, supported method of virtualizing OSX is: Guest: Leopard Server Host: ESX 5.1 Hardware: Mac Pro Mac Pro is supported on the VMware HCL. Leopard Server is legally virtualizable on Mac hardware. VMware supports OSX Leopard as a guest on ESX 5.1 Mac Pro towers are going to be less dense, but given his cooling situation, lower density is probably a win. What datacenter wants 8 kW of laptop CPUs stuffed into a rack? Virtualization would also overcome the lack of redundant PSUs.