Great design! Can't wait to see one with two MacPros interconnected in the same enclosure some day.
I think you might have to wait a LONG time before that happens.
But I thought Apple should have offered a rack mountable unit. At least a certain number of users would prefer this type of enclosure. It's great to see at least one company stepping up. I'm sure it's probably in the $2000 range, which would make sense.
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You have to love and respect Sonnet. No matter how much Apple redesign their computers to make them as un-rackmount friendly as possible, Sonnet always come back a few months later with a big middle finger to Apple by SOMEHOW making them rackmountable. Kudos
We're still running XServes happily in our media centre, and one day we may just be looking at some of these
I don't think Sonnet is giving Apple the middle finger, they are giving them those open arms to selling product based on Apple's products, which is how and why 3rd party companies exist.
Apple probably figured out that they wouldn't sell enough rack mountable units to make it worthwhile because they do have R&D costs, mfg costs, marketing costs, support costs, additional SKUs, etc. etc. and if the sales in units/dollars isn't enough to make it worthwhile, they sometimes have to shelve certain ideas. I think the way they did the cooling system was why the design changed as drastically as it did and Apple wouldn't put something like this product on the market with their name on it, so it's one of those products that a 3rd party would do instead.
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4U and 1 Mac Pro? Pfbtt! I'm making an 8U one that can hold 9 Mac Pros. I don't have time to photoshop it, but yeah...lol
It only holds one because the rest of it has other things that can be added to the MacPro like slots (which take lots of room), etc. etc. Laying the MacPro on it's side takes up 4Us, and it only leaves so much more for additional slots, etc. It's a clever design, for sure.