6 ms·

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

by bane 12y ago

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) a cleaner path from OSX to HPC would be very helpful.

lsllc 12y ago
Apple used to sell the rack mounted X-Serve, but discontinued that a few years go.
- bluedino 12y ago
  >> but discontinued that a few years go. 11 years ago.
  - grecy 12y ago
    Discontinued Jan 31, 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve#Intel_Xserve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve#Intel_Xserve
    - selectodude 12y ago
      They were last updated in 2009 though, so those Xserves they were selling in 2011 were pretty dated.
- bane 12y ago
  Yeah that was years ago. IIR there were all kinds of administrative headaches with those, though I never dealt with it myself.
jkyle 12y ago
The first cluster I managed was an SGE cluster running on rack mounted xerves.
derefr 12y ago
I get the sense that very few people that want GPU clusters, want them all the time. Most want, either at the low level, to rent some g2.2xlarge EC2 boxes, or at the high level, to pay a full-stack "render-farm-as-a-service" company. One can certainly imagine Pixar or whoever having a data-centre of Macs, but at their scale, where they also write all the software for their rendering pipeline, they can easily make that software cross-platform such that developers can test-render on a Mac, then grid-render on a Linux farm without any friction.
spitfire 12y ago
They used to. No one bought them.
sp332 12y ago
Sonnet sells this workaround that puts 2 Mac Pros in 4U http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html http://www.sonnettech.com/product/rackmacpro.html
- skuhn 12y ago
  (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&p=40 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.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Yeah I saw it was half the density. Too bad they're so expensive. On the plus side... you can actually buy them :)
    - skuhn 12y ago
      True, but now you can buy our chassis from our rack integrator (in sufficient quantities), and I'm hoping they'll be able to open source the design. If you're in the market, contact me.
skuhn 12y ago
(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.
- makeitsuckless 12y ago
  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 original Xserves phased them out again because Apple couldn't deliver that kind of service.)
  - skuhn 12y ago
    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.
gohrt 12y ago
Apple excels at human-facing industrial design and software user experience. Neither of these are relevant in a rack-mounted environment with heavily customer-written backend/batch software with no user interface
zorpner 12y ago
There used to be a ton of 3rd-party solutions for racking Apple products. Marathon Computer made a number of them, including replacement top brackets for a G3-style system: http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/june/990610/marathoncomputer.html http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/june/990610/marathoncompu... I used to have a tape measure from Marathon that was marked out in U, but I haven't seen it in years. They were a pretty cool company at the time.
dba7dba 12y ago
Having worked with some rack mountable apple servers, I have a feeling they either don't care about having their hardware installed in the data center or don't know how to do it well. Believe it's the case of don't care. I personally felt it was a disgrace to see Apple logo on the apple's rack mount servers. Considering how little rack mounted equipment is replaced versus consumer hardware, I can see why.

by bane 12y ago

lsllc 12y ago

Apple used to sell the rack mounted X-Serve, but discontinued that a few years go.

bluedino 12y ago
>> but discontinued that a few years go. 11 years ago.
- grecy 12y ago
  Discontinued Jan 31, 2011 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve#Intel_Xserve http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve#Intel_Xserve
  - selectodude 12y ago
    They were last updated in 2009 though, so those Xserves they were selling in 2011 were pretty dated.
bane 12y ago
Yeah that was years ago. IIR there were all kinds of administrative headaches with those, though I never dealt with it myself.

jkyle 12y ago

The first cluster I managed was an SGE cluster running on rack mounted xerves.

derefr 12y ago

I get the sense that very few people that want GPU clusters, want them all the time. Most want, either at the low level, to rent some g2.2xlarge EC2 boxes, or at the high level, to pay a full-stack "render-farm-as-a-service" company. One can certainly imagine Pixar or whoever having a data-centre of Macs, but at their scale, where they also write all the software for their rendering pipeline, they can easily make that software cross-platform such that developers can test-render on a Mac, then grid-render on a Linux farm without any friction.

spitfire 12y ago

They used to. No one bought them.

sp332 12y ago

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

skuhn 12y ago
(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&p=40 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.
- sp332 12y ago
  Yeah I saw it was half the density. Too bad they're so expensive. On the plus side... you can actually buy them :)
  - skuhn 12y ago
    True, but now you can buy our chassis from our rack integrator (in sufficient quantities), and I'm hoping they'll be able to open source the design. If you're in the market, contact me.

skuhn 12y ago

(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.

makeitsuckless 12y ago
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 original Xserves phased them out again because Apple couldn't deliver that kind of service.)
- skuhn 12y ago
  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.

gohrt 12y ago

Apple excels at human-facing industrial design and software user experience. Neither of these are relevant in a rack-mounted environment with heavily customer-written backend/batch software with no user interface

zorpner 12y ago

There used to be a ton of 3rd-party solutions for racking Apple products. Marathon Computer made a number of them, including replacement top brackets for a G3-style system: http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/june/990610/marathoncomputer.html http://www.macobserver.com/news/99/june/990610/marathoncompu... I used to have a tape measure from Marathon that was marked out in U, but I haven't seen it in years. They were a pretty cool company at the time.

dba7dba 12y ago

Having worked with some rack mountable apple servers, I have a feeling they either don't care about having their hardware installed in the data center or don't know how to do it well. Believe it's the case of don't care. I personally felt it was a disgrace to see Apple logo on the apple's rack mount servers. Considering how little rack mounted equipment is replaced versus consumer hardware, I can see why.