

MacStadium: Dedicated Mac Pro Hosting and Colocation - bane
http://www.macstadium.com/mac-pro

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patrickg_zill
I will offer my translation services for their marketing copy:

"Meticulously engineered and constructed to facilitate 270 Mac Pro servers per
POD while occupying only 12 square feet of datacenter floor space. "

means

"we have a cage in a datacenter with hot and cold aisles, and we bought off
the shelf commercial racking and figured out how many we can fit in that
racking"

"a pressurized environment allowing the Mac Pro servers to effortlessly draw
in conditioned air from the central chamber, and expel it thru its unified
thermal core. "

means

"the datacenter, as usual, has hot and cold aisles, so we will orient the Macs
so they draw in chilled air from the big Lieberts and expel the heated air
into the hot aisle; we will use blanking panels, custom cut styrofoam, or
other materials to keep hot air from backwashing into the cold air aisle"

"Each server is provided redundant power, cooling, and a full Gigabit of
Internet connectivity, all backed by live 24x7 support ensuring 100% uptime "

means

"we are relying on the datacenter's existing usual, typical power and cooling
infrastructure, which is redundant of course; and, we will install 1 or more
gigabit drops, with gigabit switches for each Mac to plug into"

(all pretty standard stuff in any DC)

"and the datacenter has remote hands capability, which we will use if needed"
. Since we don't know exactly the nature of their 24x7 support, we don't know
anything more.

100% uptime means only "in months that there isn't 100% uptime, you will get a
credit on your bill". Check for exclusions they give themselves for
maintenance windows.

~~~
reeses
"ensuring 100% uptime" without an asterisk pointing to a 300-page list of
exceptions is obviously hiding it deep in the T&Cs when signing up.

The amusing part is that this sort of assurance has exactly the value you
mentioned. You may be running your $20m business on this $50 service (Elvis
help you), but if you're down for a month, the maximum you're going to get
back is $50, and very likely only in the form of a service credit.

I'm not sure if you looked at the other pages, because OMFG WHAT THE HELL IS
WITH THE GODADDY STYLE IMAGERY, but you'll note they're using EMC "Clarion"
SAN devices.

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eddieroger
What a waste of a Mac. I'm all for the novelty of doing something neat with
Apple hardware (System X, macminicolo), but this machine isn't suited for
headless closet-sitting. It's meant to be on a desk in Pixar, NBC or another
live video venue, rendering things in real time and lighting up 4K displays.

~~~
calinet6
Someone probably discovered that it's cost-effective due to heat and power
efficiency.

It might make more sense than you think. Maybe.

~~~
Udo
It depends on the application, but the 2 vast graphics cards that make up a
sizable part of the Pro's power draw will go to waste completely in a typical
server application. The setup could be interesting for compute tasks or
specialized render farms, but then again similar performance could be had with
much cheaper components.

I don't think there are lots of applications where the use of a Mac is
actually a financially sound decision in this scenario.

~~~
eddieroger
I agree with this. There aren't enough applications yet that even touch what
the Mac Pro can do, and when they do exist, limiting them by network bandwidth
through colocation seems like a dumb move. Give me a farm of Mac Minis any
day.

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mattbee
A desktop system with a novel thermal design is being packed in tightly in a
way that the manufacturer probably hasn't tested, and in a way that's going to
be hard to diagnose or fix? He who dares I guess :)

What do people use hosted Macs for anyway? I guess there must be some niches,
but surely everything that's great about a Mac is optimised for local usage?

~~~
nwh
OSX can only be run on Mac hardware. If you want virtual Macs within the EULA,
this is what you must do. This would be attractive for people wanting to to
build testing on mac machines, for example.

~~~
JohnHelm
> _OSX can only be run on Mac hardware._

[http://www.tonymacx86.com/](http://www.tonymacx86.com/)

~~~
nwh
If you are an enterprise you would not be using modified kernels with the copy
protection neutered in production.

~~~
matthew-wegner
Two quick technical points:

1) OS X itself does not utilize _any_ copy protection. There are no serial
numbers, call-home activations, etc.

2) You can run OS X without any modified kernels or kexts with the right mix
of hardware.

~~~
nwh
There is actually. Look for the following kernel extension.

    
    
       Don't Steal MacOSX.kext
    

(Name might be wrong, but it's certainly there)

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jere
Sure, why not iPhone colocation too?

This seems like buying a Ferrari for your mailman. Well, except the difference
is you'd actually get to see the Ferrari once a day.

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grecy
Is this purely a marketing ploy? Surely blades are much, much better suited
for this...

~~~
vernie
Show me a blade that I can legally run OS X on.

~~~
grecy
I thought you could legally run OS X on VMWare - am I mistaken?

~~~
taspeotis
You can (per the EULA [1]) virtualise OS X on Apple hardware. VMware can run
on Apple hardware.

    
    
        run up to two (2) additional copies or instances of the Apple 
        Software within virtual operating system environments on each
        Mac Computer you own or control that is already running the
        Apple Software
    

[1]
[http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX109.pdf](http://www.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/OSX109.pdf)

~~~
grecy
Thanks, I didn't know you couldn't legally visualize OS X on non-Apple
hardware.

That's gotta be hurting them now they have no xServe

~~~
duskwuff
You can't. The terms quoted above specifically restrict it to virtualizing Mac
OS X on Apple hardware.

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LeafStorm
Oddly enough, back when the cylindrical Mac Pro was first announced, a
coworker and I discussed how exactly one would rack them. We came up with
something very similar, but slightly asymmetric, and designed to hook into a
standard 19" rack.

(This was prompted by the question of what Apple's Web site runs on if they
don't make servers any more.)

------
andrewliebchen
Is it becoming tradition now to do something like this every time a new Mac
Pro is released?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_(computing)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_X_\(computing\))

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wtn
100% uptime?

~~~
devonbleak
I'm sold based on this alone!

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ashchristopher
You know what's relevant to cloud hosting? Women in short shorts and cleavage.

[http://www.macstadium.com/solutions](http://www.macstadium.com/solutions)

#sexismintech =(

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JohnHelm
Is this a joke? I guess if you have money to burn.

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ps4fanboy
Thought that was the stack overflow log for a second had to do a double take.

