It strikes me that OS X is a solid server platform. Linux is always a more flexible choice, but if OS X works for you, it works for you. That being said, is sticking cylindrical mac pros on their side into square racks really the best solution.
There are 2 problems I see with this design:
1: You are placing the Mac Pros on their side, which may lead to premature bearing failure on the main cooling fan. Apple designed the cooling fan to be as silent as possible, which means that they optimized the bearing and the fan to work in vertical orientation. Bearings designed for thrust (vertical) orientation may not work so well if placed horizontally for a long time.
2: You are fitting triangular shaped computers, wrapped into round cases, into square shaped boxes, resulting in significant loss of space density.
Considering that Apple is a huge company that owns huge data centers, combined with the fact that it would be simply stupid for a company who makes their own OS to run anything but that OS, and combined with the above mentioned problems with using Mac Pros as server "logs" (because you cant call them blades), I would assume that Apple has internally OSX servers designed in the traditional blade configuration.
They may not sell or advertise them, but they MUST have them. Given that you guys are buying a ton of hardware, and are located nearby, and would be actively promoting running Apple hardware, wouldn't it be wise to at least approach Apple and see if they would be kind enough to sell you some of those blade form factor servers they simply must have.
I may be completely wrong here, but apple did brag about how Swift is the new language thats so flexible that you can make a Mobile app in it, or a Desktop app, or even a full blown social network. If that's the case, they must have some plans for the server market? No?
Any way, in the end it's a cool design, but I would seriously consider at least stacking the Mac Pros vertically to avoid fan issues. You can actually get a tighter form factor that way as well, unless space is not the issue. And if it's not, then hell, what's wrong with just placing a bunch of Pros on an Ikea shelf in a well air-conditioned room :)
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 live for at least a year, we're doing alright. Do note that Apple specifically says that the Mac Pro may be operated on its side. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201379
2. True, but 1U per server is not bad density by any stretch. For my app servers, they effectively occupy 0.5U; database and storage effectively occupy 1U. So this puts the Mac Pros on par with the larger server class. Were we to deploy renderers in conventional server chassis, a similar system would occupy at least an effective 1U if not a full 2U.
What Apple does internally is, of course, shrouded in mystery. I know some people there, and we talk to people when we can, but they just aren't the kind of company that is going to tell you how they make the sausage.
From what I've heard and my sense from speaking with them over the years, they do not use OS X in production. They used to use Darwin and Solaris, and now almost exclusively use Linux (presumably Solaris is still around to run Oracle). They did used to use Xserves internally, but even at their scale it isn't worth building them just for their own use.
Fascinating, I had no idea Apple approves using the Mac Pros on their side. It would be interesting to find out what happens with the fans.
It's also fascinating that they are running Linux internally nowadays, for their server side stuff. What next, I find out that all of the Microsoft data centers run Debian :) Considering that they employ all of those Objective-C and Swift engineers, you would thing that they would want to leverage their workforce write Obj-C or Swift backend code as well. For most backend tasks either Swift or Obj-C is as good of a language as any other.
Any way, rackable OS X systems are a missed opportunity for Apple. They can sell them to a company like yours, movie production houses, and even design some libraries and make a play for the web app market with Swift. Not sure how successful the last one would be. As for the economies of scale, they don't even need to manufacture or design the system, take an off the shelf rack mount server from another manufacturer, fiddle around with the casing a bit to give it that Apple feel, and load OSX on it. Perhaps the margins in the server side hardware are way too slim.
I feel quite lucky to have got a few before they stopped selling them. I have three dual-cpu xServes still running as our main app servers and they've been some of the most reliable boxes we have.
And I don't believe that they only started using unix operating systems not their own "nowadays" - when OS X was too immature during development and its long maturation what did you think they were using?
I thought they were using NeXTSTEP, hence all the NS API calls in Obj-C. Back in 1989 I am guessing NeXT would be built on some kind of Unix system first. Considering that OS X is a descendent of NeXT, I would think that before OS X, they would use it to run code, servers, etc.
"combined with the fact that it would be simply stupid for a company who makes their own OS to run anything but that OS"
Why would you assume that? There are a ton of things that linux does better than OS X - and it would be extremely stupid for any company regardless of size to not use the right tool for the job. For example, even IBM uses, sells, and supports Linux instead of AIX or OS/360 on their line of servers and mainframes. I think that your assumption is just really old fashioned.
Internally Apple does use Linux, just as Microsoft uses a blend of OS's - supporting Linux on Azure, for example. I read that they actually use Linux as a host for their Hadoop service on Azure.
At it's core OS X is Unix. In what way would Linux be a better choice? I am not saying that Linux is a worse choice, but for a company that writes an OS as one of it's core businesses, it only makes sense to run that OS in as many places as possible. For one, by running OS X as a server OS they would necessarily spend more time on development and improvement of the OS core. This would pay off in the long run by further improving stability and reliability of OS X.
I am not arguing that OS X is the perfect solution in most circumstances, but it can be a good solution in many situations, especially if you are Apple, and have the full source and the capability to adopt the OS as necessary.
Microsoft, especially nowadays, tries to be very cross compatible, so it's not surprising that Azure supports Linux apps and guests. But Azure RUNS on Windows Server 2008, not Linux, not Unix.
Because it isn't really about the OS, it's about the software. OS X is fine as a server platform, but it doesn't have the same software and support ecosystem for data center usage. Apple dumped that market with the Xserve because it didn't work for them.
Red Hat/Suse/Oracle etc. all sell tailored solutions for that usage that are Linux specific technology (mostly, some stuff gets ported to other Unix derivatives but most doesn't). Sure Apple could do all that too, but they don't want to. It isn't their market, so why sink money and effort into engineering OS X to do it when they can just buy high quality products ready to go?
What tools is OS X lacking? From my experience most of the development and server tools are available natively on OS X. It lacks support for containers, but that would be a worthy addition, and I would say worth spending money and time on. The rest is already there for the most part. Developing further their server infrastructure would allow Apple to make a play for the corporate market. Any way, it's a silly argument. I thought they ran most of their backend on OS X, it looks like was wrong.
It's not small server stuff like Apache that they are missing. It's stuff like distributed failover, exotic driver support, SAN, management etc. that they are missing. Big data center stuff, the kind of thing companies like Red Hat make.
Those kinds of products are huge investments. Sure Apple might be able to market towards the enterprise, but they simply don't think there is any money to be made. They used to have for instance Xserve that tried to stay afloat in that market, but which made little money. Since they canceled it, Mac OS has only been developed as a small to medium server (which it isn't half bad at). But big time data centers are a different world.
For instance, as a very basic example, does Mac OS support Infiniband or the more exotic high-speed ethernet network interfaces? For Infiniband, the answer is no and in the other case the answer is "kinda, but not really."
My background:7 Xserves still in production here in K-12 education, 1000+ users in OpenDirectory
In the pipeline:Migrating to the new shiny Mac Pros along with OS X Server
Reasons: Thunderbolt 2 connectivity is amazing and works fine to connect FibreChannel RAIDs.
OS X Server: Though it's correct that the GUI got simplified a bit, it's the same server package and complex as it always has been, however easy enough to support. And if configured correctly, a solid workhorse for many scenarios: network accounts for lab use, calendar and contacts server, along with some helper tools it works in heterogene environments fine, supports huge amounts of users in via LDAP..just to name some reasons. for 20 bucks the best server os to support Mac and iOS clients. And because the underlying foundation is UNIX, it's friendly with any networking stuff such as RADIUS for your WP2-Enterprise wi-fi needs..just to name a view.
One thing that is not quite right in the post above: SAN support exists via XSAN.
There are 2 problems I see with this design:
1: You are placing the Mac Pros on their side, which may lead to premature bearing failure on the main cooling fan. Apple designed the cooling fan to be as silent as possible, which means that they optimized the bearing and the fan to work in vertical orientation. Bearings designed for thrust (vertical) orientation may not work so well if placed horizontally for a long time.
2: You are fitting triangular shaped computers, wrapped into round cases, into square shaped boxes, resulting in significant loss of space density.
Considering that Apple is a huge company that owns huge data centers, combined with the fact that it would be simply stupid for a company who makes their own OS to run anything but that OS, and combined with the above mentioned problems with using Mac Pros as server "logs" (because you cant call them blades), I would assume that Apple has internally OSX servers designed in the traditional blade configuration.
They may not sell or advertise them, but they MUST have them. Given that you guys are buying a ton of hardware, and are located nearby, and would be actively promoting running Apple hardware, wouldn't it be wise to at least approach Apple and see if they would be kind enough to sell you some of those blade form factor servers they simply must have.
I may be completely wrong here, but apple did brag about how Swift is the new language thats so flexible that you can make a Mobile app in it, or a Desktop app, or even a full blown social network. If that's the case, they must have some plans for the server market? No?
Any way, in the end it's a cool design, but I would seriously consider at least stacking the Mac Pros vertically to avoid fan issues. You can actually get a tighter form factor that way as well, unless space is not the issue. And if it's not, then hell, what's wrong with just placing a bunch of Pros on an Ikea shelf in a well air-conditioned room :)