skuhn

39 ms·

361.
by skuhn 11y ago
Exposing more detail behind this math is unfortunately not something that I'm ready to do, but I'm pretty comfortable with it in broad strokes. EC2 really is that much more expensive, when you factor in things like network bandwid
362.
by skuhn 11y ago
Without going into too much detail about our stack, there's quite a bit more to Core Image than OpenGL+graphics card driver. Those are important components, and we're not talking about splitting the atom here, but Apple has had a
363.
by skuhn 11y ago
I'm not aware of anyone who specifically uses Mac Pros (although I've heard some private rumblings). I suspect part of the issue is that the old form factor was not very rack-friendly, and people haven't gotten comfortable wi
364.
by skuhn 11y ago
I mention it because AFAIK, all of imgix's direct competitors run in EC2.
365.
by skuhn 11y ago
Cropping and sizing are just two (common) operations that imgix can perform. There's a lot of other stuff as well: http://www.imgix.com/docs/reference Not to say that it's totally impossible to do these types
366.
by skuhn 11y ago
1. That's certainly a possibility, and one that we won't really have hard numbers on for some time to come. However, the fan is about a $60 part, so provided that we don't have coordinated, catastrophic failures and that they
367.
by skuhn 11y ago
I've answered the concern about Wera hand tools before, but to reiterate my position: a $6 screwdriver doesn't matter if it helps you do your job. Not having a screwdriver when you need it in a pinch is penny wise and pound foolis
368.
by skuhn 11y ago
There are definitely risks, but I do want to gently re-iterate that we're not blind to them. About the only thing that Apple could do that would render this chassis obsolete is to substantially change the exterior dimensions of the Mac
369.
by skuhn 11y ago
The Minis are incredibly simple machines inside, and their airflow is not great. You could pop their logic boards out and run them without the chassis. With some thought it wouldn't be too tough to significantly improve their airflow f
370.
by skuhn 11y ago
It is appealing in a way, but I also think it would put the business at legal risk in a way that is totally unconscionable. We cannot run a Hackintosh in production for a single moment, the long term ramifications could be immense. The chas
371.
by skuhn 11y ago
I theorize that it's because they're server grade equipment, and the used market for server gear is not that large. Most established businesses don't want to risk buying something that straight up doesn't work or will fa
372.
by skuhn 11y ago
In fairness, 4 socket servers are pretty serious money. Just the difference in cost for 4 socket capable Xeons alone puts them out of reach for many use cases. E5-2658 v2 (dual cpu): $1440 per part E5-4650 v2 (quad cpu): $3616 per par
373.
by skuhn 11y ago
Not at the moment. The cost overhead to OS X is minimized by my approach to datacenter design and operation, and the benefit of OS X's image processing software stack is maximized by the imaging engineers on staff at imgix who are maki
374.
by skuhn 11y ago
It is intriguing, and we have one D700 Mac Pro for test purposes. At the time we ordered the Pros for the prototype rack that is the subject of this article, we found that other parts of our pipeline were preventing us from taking full adva
375.
by skuhn 11y ago
Thanks! A previous post in the series went into a little more detail about the datacenter itself: http://photos.imgix.com/building-a-graphics-card-for-the-int...
376.
by skuhn 11y ago
The crash cart is the method of last resort, and it's come into play a fair amount as we were figuring out how to do this. The better solution is to have a NetRestore server on the network, and configure the Macs to boot from a particu
377.
by skuhn 11y ago
You do have to employ a bit of a twisting motion to remove them, since they have some gasketing in place. I wanted to add a dry ice smoke machine and blue LEDs, but alas...
378.
by skuhn 11y ago
We use MK1's Mac Mini shelf (as seen at http://photos.imgix.com/building-a-graphics-card-for-the-int... ), which is pictured at that page. I just wasn't in love with their Mac Pro shelf design, so we went a differe
379.
by skuhn 11y ago
Sorry, I do have this evaluation in a spreadsheet somewhere (except against the Tesla K20, K80 wasn't out then), but I just quickly looked up the Mac Pro specs. We do use the D500, so I should have quoted those gflops. There is a benef
380.
by skuhn 11y ago
A lot of the complexity comes down to not just doing the operation, but doing it correctly and quickly. ImageMagick does multiple passes, for instance; this is sub-optimal for both quality and speed.
381.
by skuhn 11y ago
We added another wider shot of the chassis, but here are two others that didn't go in to hopefully give you a better sense of how the chassis actually looks: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6jwqwxsu50zvhrw/_1090440.
382.
by skuhn 11y ago
Agreed, I didn't want to sugar coat things either. I think there is a bit of time given over to the downsides, but finding the right balance is tricky, and perhaps I erred by focusing too strongly on the "this is awesome!" si
383.
by skuhn 11y ago
The real question to me is: why would anyone fund doing this in EC2? Here's the quick math on cost per gflop, including all network and datacenter costs: Mac Pro: $5/gflop EC2 g2.xlarge: $21.19/gflop
384.
by skuhn 11y ago
The GPUs in the Mac Pro are significantly more cost effective per gflop than the equivalent AMD Fire Pro server models.
385.
by skuhn 11y ago
The longevity of the previous Mac Pro form factor definitely gives me hope, although one can never be sure when it comes to Apple. Consider Mac Rumor's lifespan of the various Mac Pro models: http://buyersguide.macrumors.com
386.
by skuhn 11y ago
I'm graphing this type of data, but it's too early to draw firm conclusions. I was mainly concerned that the upper, rear units might not fit within my desired thermal envelope, but so far it hasn't been an issue at all. This
387.
by skuhn 11y 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.
388.
by skuhn 11y ago
Zapping the PRAM is a pretty frequent joke around the office. There are some OS X groups that are more focused on automated deployments for IT type stuff, so those can often be a source of more enlightened discourse, even though it still is
389.
by skuhn 11y ago
For our use case, the disk portion doesn't live on the Mac Pros (we have Linux systems that act as storage servers). We toyed with open shelf type solutions that would let us mount the systems front-to-back, but as you noted, anything
390.
by skuhn 11y ago
We wrote a little tool to probe SMC and graph the output, so we know CPU temp and fan speeds and whatnot. If a fan were to fail, it shows up as 0 rpm speed (in my experience thus far), so we can tell and take the host offline. Even if you c

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