160 Mac Minis, One Rack

Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by meaty on Sunday December 09, 2012 @04:49PM (#4896271)

I'm actually surprised any DC would take that equipment. They, in my experience at least, are very fussy about what what you put in the racks and power draw etc.

Oh and we get 640 cores in 20U (8x4 core xeon machines each 1u) and that leaves enough room for a 32Tb SAN, FC switches and a pair of redundant LAN switches.

REgarding splitting the power using the hack described, 160 melted minis and a halon cloud coming up.

Looks pretty though.

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by michaelt on Sunday December 09, 2012 @05:16PM (#4896387)

A 1U xserve maxes out at 334 Watts [1]. Each Mac mini takes 85 Watts [2], so 4 is 340 Watts. At 220v that's 1.54 Amps.

Is splitting the power really so dangerous?

[1] http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3513 [2] http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3468

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by jws on Sunday December 09, 2012 @05:02PM (#4896321)

REgarding splitting the power using the hack described, 160 melted minis and a halon cloud coming up.

You should have a talk with your power cord provider. You should be using cables that can handle at least 4 amps in anything with a 110v plug on it. I don't think you can buy one smaller than 18ga and those are good for 10 amps. Remember, you have to handle enough current to blow the breaker if something goes wrong (unless you are British and have your own fuse in the plug).

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by simbimbo on Sunday December 09, 2012 @09:51PM (#4897231)

We went through several designs with the vendor. This cable is designed to operate at the circuit rating. The wire from the PDU plug to the split is 12GA 600V and the cable from the split to the mini is 14GA 300V.

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by alexkus on Monday December 10, 2012 @04:18AM (#4898214)

It must be their own DC.

Most rackspace rented (in UK DC's at least) tend to be a maximum of 16A (at 240V) per 42U cabinet, so just under 4kW. By my estimation those Mac Minis will be drawing ~13kW at peak.

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by EwanToo on Monday December 10, 2012 @05:41AM (#4898445)

You can get higher power density in a rack in pretty much any UK DC, you just need to pay for it.

The problem is you often end up paying for the rack space that would be allocated for the total power you're using, without actually getting the rack space!

In exchange, the DC's own electrician turns up during your install and makes sure things are working correctly and safely, you might end up with different sockets if required, 3-phase power, etc.

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Re:160 Mac Minis, One Rack by meaty on Monday December 10, 2012 @08:05AM (#4898793)

Or in the case above the DC's electrician would turn up and go "what the fuck is that mess - you're not putting that in my racks".

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