MP 7,1 MacPro Rack 7.1 aka RackPro thread!

[edgerider]

Hi I will post here all my experiences with the MacPro 7.1 Rack.
mine was ordered one week ago here in Paris france, today apple call me back to tell me that they were experiencing very high issue with the factory in Wuhang in china and my machine delivery is post ponned to end of february....

I ordered a base version with 1 tb sdd upgrade,

i already have secured a great deal for a w-3245 16 core, and 384 gb of ram, an amfeltec squid 6 and a bunch of 970 pro ssd....

a few thing to note : why the rack version ?
because the tower version is stupid as **** if you have a lot of connectivity because you have to unplug all the dam things just to access inside because othewise YOU CANT LIFT THE ***** HOUSSING!!!!

trust me pcie expander and sas raid card are not ment to be plugged and unplugged all day long.... so if you will have a lot of different configuration to fullfill and like me have to swap pcie card a lot , trust me get a rack version!

now if you have questions let me know!!!!

 

[ruslan120]

Is it more important to be respected or to be liked?

 

[theluggage]

I don't really have a dog in this race as the current Mac Pro definitely doesn't meet my needs, but I found the following videos on YouTube informative - about the only positive-yet-critical review of the new MP I've seen by someone who actually does have a professional use-case for the hardware (even down to needing all 8 PCIe slots and having to remove the Apple I/O card...)

 

[edgerider]

Is it more important to be respected or to be liked?

I depends if you care about others feeling... 😂
[automerge]1580407840[/automerge]

I don't really have a dog in this race as the current Mac Pro definitely doesn't meet my needs, but I found the following videos on YouTube informative - about the only positive-yet-critical review of the new MP I've seen by someone who actually does have a professional use-case for the hardware (even down to needing all 8 PCIe slots and having to remove the Apple I/O card...)

many thank!
yes this is a very informative video and says it straight foward the way it is.

I am in the same boat as this guy but in video, not in music.

my machine will be in a 19 » 10 u rolling flycase with a netapp ds4346 filler with 12g sas but from set to set I will customize the machine to fullfill my customers needs some of them will need more gpu power, some will need 8k capture cards, and so on...
so i will basically customize the machine every time it goes out....
therefore the rack is vital for me.

my first complain is :

you cant sale a 50k server without a way to put a redondant power supply.

I am looking to buy a spare psu , because all my machine are rented with redundant psu and a spare.

on a movie set , power outage are very frequent so having redondant power supply save on ups sizing.

 

[deconstruct60]

you cant sale a 50k server without a way to put a redondant power supply.

I am looking to buy a spare psu , because all my machine are rented with redundant psu and a spare.

on a movie set , power outage are very frequent so having redondant power supply save on ups sizing.

having two power supplies isn't going to help much when there is no power coming out of the socket. Can have two completely independent power supply circuits which would be the real root source of the redundancy in terms of supply.

Power outages due to overload blown circuit breakers can work if plug into two different circuit with two different breakers. ( although more likely to get a cascade failures when many systems suddenly switch. Yet even more overloaded circuits.) ). But if power cuts off to the general site then two power supplies isn't going to help much.

Two power supplies in a server is more often a redundancy of the power supply failure in and of itself. If primary issue is two circuit supply then can perhaps get a box that takes two feeds and plug the Mac Pro into that. it doesn't have to be internal to work.

"Failover" is a bit more descriptive there than redundant ( as in 'spare' ).

 

[edgerider]

having two power supplies isn't going to help much when there is no power coming out of the socket. Can have two completely independent power supply circuits which would be the real root source of the redundancy in terms of supply.

Power outages due to overload blown circuit breakers can work if plug into two different circuit with two different breakers. ( although more likely to get a cascade failures when many systems suddenly switch. Yet even more overloaded circuits.) ). But if power cuts off to the general site then two power supplies isn't going to help much.

Two power supplies in a server is more often a redundancy of the power supply failure in and of itself. If primary issue is two circuit supply then can perhaps get a box that takes two feeds and plug the Mac Pro into that. it doesn't have to be internal to work.

"Failover" is a bit more descriptive there than redundant ( as in 'spare' ).

on a set we have generator, so one side is under ups with generator ready to run and the other side is on the grid... if the grid goes down, the ups starts the generator.
a generator can not start fast enough alone.

 

[deconstruct60]

on a set we have generator, so one side is under ups with generator ready to run and the other side is on the grid... if the grid goes down, the ups starts the generator.
a generator can not start fast enough alone.

If using the UPS to stop gap the slow transition between sources then having a two input box and having the UPS plugged into that isn't materially much different.

The UPS has to 'catch and scaffold ' the transition regardless until the local gas generator is up and running. So whether that is "front" or "back" of the UPS doesn't make that much of a difference.

If line condition the power before feeding it to the Mac Pro's power supply then probably won't need as many replacement power supplies.

There is an narrow edge case if get power failure and a power supply failure you can re-juggle the plugs and continue with redundant power supplies with no spare part insertion into the system.

 

[edgerider]

If using the UPS to stop gap the slow transition between sources then having a two input box and having the UPS plugged into that isn't materially much different.

The UPS has to 'catch and scaffold ' the transition regardless until the local gas generator is up and running. So whether that is "front" or "back" of the UPS doesn't make that much of a difference.

If line condition the power before feeding it to the Mac Pro's power supply then probably won't need as many replacement power supplies.

There is an narrow edge case if get power failure and a power supply failure you can re-juggle the plugs and continue with redundant power supplies with no spare part insertion into the system.

i probably miss explained or got lost in translation : the generator is not running . both psu are wired to the ups , but the ups is meant for zero cut and if the power of the grid goes down, a relay trigger the generator starter until it start and as soon as the ups sense a stable tension coming from the generator it use the generator as a power source. when the power on the grid comes back the relay cut the power coming from the generator and wait 3 minute at idle or until the ups got 95% charged, and turn the generator off.

the dual psu is just a safety and alows to un plug one lead to plug it back on one other grid if we need to.

sometime we have render running and a long road with the lorry , so there are aslo 24 v connectors so we can run the ups from the 24 v of the lorry ... this particular appliance is ment to be moved while never powered of because the ups can handle 1/4h at full blast, and the honda 30i generator can be moved with it. see it as a super macbook pro... very specialized for our particular alway different always on the move work.

having two psu means you can change a faulty psu while the other is still running with zero downtime.

 

[theluggage]

having two psu means you can change a faulty psu while the other is still running with zero downtime.

...another use is to connect two independent mains power sources, though, which may be more important than the "replacing a faulty power supply" scenario (if a power supply fails in a computer, its usually wise to investigate why rather than just slap a new one in - it could be a fault in the computer, or the failing PSU could have caused a fault).

However, I'd normally have associated both with the "large server farm" where, although the risk is small, it is multiplied by dozens of servers. As I've said in another thread (and as evidenced by both your case and the videos I linked to) I suspect the purpose of the Rack Pro was for customers who have loads of rackmount A/V hardware rather than the server farm.

The 'working on location with flakey power' angle hadn't occurred to me, and it sounds like it hadn't occurred to Apple. Whups. (Same for the 'not all audio studio racks are full depth' issue in the video...)

 

[edgerider]

...another use is to connect two independent mains power sources, though, which may be more important than the "replacing a faulty power supply" scenario (if a power supply fails in a computer, its usually wise to investigate why rather than just slap a new one in - it could be a fault in the computer, or the failing PSU could have caused a fault).

However, I'd normally have associated both with the "large server farm" where, although the risk is small, it is multiplied by dozens of servers. As I've said in another thread (and as evidenced by both your case and the videos I linked to) I suspect the purpose of the Rack Pro was for customers who have loads of rackmount A/V hardware rather than the server farm.

The 'working on location with flakey power' angle hadn't occurred to me, and it sounds like it hadn't occurred to Apple. Whups. (Same for the 'not all audio studio racks are full depth' issue in the video...)

yes at some point on a set we almost outpower the grid at least once because they plan lights ahead but sometimes they ad lights and the technician needs to keep moving and they dont care about anything else, I remember a technician who was at the end of is shaft and cut the main power because he ended his day while we were doing the network backup from the phantom camera and we got a corrupted cinemag because we lost power on the camera...