MP 7,1 Waiting for Mac Pro 7,1 A1991 (no more)

[fuchsdh]

I'm not sure HP has ever sold one of those things at full price? I've never bought one of their desktop workstations, but I have owned a ZBook, and they're at least 30% off the base web configurator price even if you buy one of them. I'm sure they're closer to 50% off for volume customers.

One place you can see this is that HP lists the top Xeon Platinum 8180 processor as a $20,000 option on the Z8. That's a well-known $10,000 processor that googling "Xeon Platinum 8180 price" will immediately reveal as a $10,000 processor. Who'd pay HP $10,000 to pop it in its socket? Maybe the Pentagon, but outside of that?

They wouldn't offer it as an option unless people actually picked it, even if infrequently.

Even HP I imagine most customers just buy direct and do minimal upgrades. People frankensteining their Mac Pros are a limited edge case. Having access to the components seems like more a boon to easy repair and recommissioning the system for low down-time rather than a major customer feature.
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I'm not sure HP has ever sold one of those things at full price? I've never bought one of their desktop workstations, but I have owned a ZBook, and they're at least 30% off the base web configurator price even if you buy one of them. I'm sure they're closer to 50% off for volume customers.

One place you can see this is that HP lists the top Xeon Platinum 8180 processor as a $20,000 option on the Z8. That's a well-known $10,000 processor that googling "Xeon Platinum 8180 price" will immediately reveal as a $10,000 processor. Who'd pay HP $10,000 to pop it in its socket? Maybe the Pentagon, but outside of that?

They wouldn't offer it as an option unless people actually picked it, even if infrequently.

Even HP I imagine most customers just buy direct and do minimal upgrades. People frankensteining their Mac Pros are a limited edge case. Having access to the components seems like more a boon to easy repair and recommissioning the system for low down-time rather than a major customer feature.

Even if you had more money than sense, I don't see why you'd ever buy really high-end SKUs of workstations and keep them for years rather than getting comparatively more power for your money with something cheaper and then more frequently updating.

 

[danwells]

I think people buy them - I just think they are bought on negotiated contracts for a great deal less than the web price. I suspect that even someone buying just one can go to CDW or call HP Business Sales directly, and probably get 30% off. The more likely case of a company with a bunch of them might get closer to 50% off those prices on many upgrades due to a relationship with HP.

Many manufacturers don't try for huge profits on the hardware - they want to get it out there to profit on the service contracts (a higher-end Z would almost always be under a comprehensive service contract - unless it was within the nsa.gov domain, where I'm sure some of these things wind up).

Notice that it's the top-end options on the Z that are way above market on the web configurator (the smaller memory capacities and drives are pretty reasonable). Not coincidentally, it's the top-end options that nobody would ever buy without calling HP directly (nobody would order a $100,000 workstation without talking to the manufacturer - but someone might very well buy a $6000 workstation online).

 

[deconstruct60]

External USB drives do not depend on whatever controller is used for the Mac or PC's internal drives.
External drives which are connected via USB-C or USB 2.0/3.0/3.1 can be any drive type: USB thumb drive, SATA, NVMe or even IDE drives.

It isn't about USB being the same it is about the drives being different. A SATA drive inside a USB drive enclosure or inside sitting on a native SATA link isn't too different once get in 5-10 Gb/s versions of USB. However, a NVMe will be. A Decent NVMe drive is x4 PCI-e v3 ( 32 Gb/s) is throttled by USB. The device sitting on the native interface will not be throttled at that connection. SATA and a single drive is not much different for USB, but that does not hold for all of the alternative interfaces.

A NVMe drive inside of a USB container is a waste of money. You are paying extra from performance (low latency and bandwidth) you are never going to to get. Better off with a SSD controller that just does SATA. It is cheaper and modern USB can actually reasonably efficiently handle if use UASP mode of USB. USB is is a passable as useful high bandwidth storage interface ( it sucks less than it used to).

Or even 1.44 Mb floppy drives & optical drives can be connected via USB.

USB's pragmatic ubiquity is completely immaterial to what I was talking about. That is just misdirection.

With Macs that have the T2 controller chip for the boot drive, the internal Mac boot drive may become completely inaccessible, due to encryption or maybe lack of device driver. No idea if there's some kind of work-around when the Mac (with a T2 controller) is booted from an external USB drive.

T2 drive subsystem might fail, but it is extremely unlikely that the subsystem of the T2 that controls the boot process will fail. ( it is about as likely as the System management/power controller failing in current Macs. ). There is no huge increase of risk/danger here.

If the T2 boot subsystem gets borked there is no work around with external drives ( and there isn't now without the T2 if acess to the boot firmware is borked. ). There is no shift in danger.

The narrow corner case that could get squirrelly is if the T2 based system can't even boot in macOS Recovery mode over the internet and the system is locked into "no external boot" mode (which is the default). [ Apple will trust their servers with a pristine copy of the recovery OS image. They probably do a secure validate to determine the system is talking to the "mothership" over a secure, authenticated link. ]. if you can't get to macOS recovery to turn that off, then you are stuck. However, as long as that setting is off and the boot subsystem is working there is nothing getting in the way of booting off an external drive if the T2 drive subsystem is "broke".

if have an internet connection though after a slow internet boot into Recovery the external boot mode can be set to off whatever the previous setting was. If there are multiple internal drives and Apple trusts those by default may not need the Internet boot (grab a modern recovery image from another drive), but single drive Mac systems have had a built-in alternative for years with the internet boot option for when the internal SSD fails.

 

[mattspace]

T2 drive subsystem might fail, but it is extremely unlikely that the subsystem of the T2 that controls the boot process will fail. ( it is about as likely as the System management/power controller failing in current Macs. ). There is no huge increase of risk/danger here.

BridgeOS (the T2's OS) caused kernel panics seem to be a pretty widely reported problem with T(X) based macs, so I'd be cautious about putting too much faith in it.

 

[deconstruct60]

BridgeOS (the T2's OS) caused kernel panics seem to be a pretty widely reported problem with T(X) based macs, so I'd be cautious about putting too much faith in it.

bridge OS isn't the T2. It is software. The fix for software is to load bug fixed software version N+1. It isn't a catastrophic fail.

Second, the problems with bridgeOS likely were low level interaction for software services. macOS handing something to be en/decrypted or for Macbooks the synchronous coping of the touch screen frame buffer data out of memory and into some memory buffer of the T2.

none of that has to do with boot. Boot for the T2 is very similar to what apple boots the iOS devices as. That code is probably spread over far more devices and have flushed out much better than the "new" stuff to graft interactions to macOS.

From what I've read, it appears BridgeOS isn't throwing the kernel panics. It macOS that is throwing the panics. That points to the interface between the two... not to BridgeOS core services internals being unstable.

masOS has to have gotten to the stage that it booted for macOS to throw a kernel panic. That boot is done.

 

[danwells]

I'm not aware anyone is talking about NVMe drives on USB. My understanding of the conversation was "we all want (and are hopefully getting) at least 2-4 slots for NVMe blades internally, although knowing Apple, they may not be standard". The question is about inherently slow 3.5" spinners, not fast PCIe SSDs.

Even if someone wanted more NVMe drives than the internal capacity accommodated, those would almost certainly go on Thunderbolt 3, rather than any variant of USB. One possibility would be something like this enclosure. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2

$349 for four perfectly standard NVMe slots doesn't strike me as extravagant - whether it's needed because Apple skimped on the slots or because they did something nonstandard and are selling Apple SSDs for a premium.

 

[edgerider]

If 3,5 inch platter was a thing of the past, why does ALL PC MOTHERBOARD
and ALL PRO GRADE workstation are equiped with at least 4/6/8 drive bay?
when we will be abble to buy a 10 tb M2 ssd for 500$, platter will be something of the past, but until then...
the perfect modular macpro exist, it is called a cMP, keep the concept,dichthe drive bay and use the space to drop a couple of beefier psu that can handle 4
gpu ala HPZ860 keep the 4 sled, and ad 4 m2 slot , make 2 type of daughter board : one for single i9 at low price, and one for dual xeon that can be interchanged.
to me the main board should only be a pcie expander with four double width 16x pcie slot, and four managable slot that share a 16x link.
with one machine they could have a 2000€ i7 6core machine and a 30k$ dual xeon beast.
daughter board should have 10gbe, and four usb-c thunderbolt3, processor socket, and ram slot.
this would sale crazy, because you could go full monty or buy a cheap config, and upgrade it along the way...
If it is profitable to supermicro i dont see why it would not be profitable to apple...
servergrade hardware is widely available and cheap....

 

[-hh]

Apologies for the delay in reading & posting (was out photographing waterfalls in Iceland)

8TB 7200 RPM enterprise drive (probably that same Ironwolf from the example above) in USB-C external case: $299
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...ologies_bbpr8000_8tb_blackbox_pro_rugged.html

That's why Apple won't put a big ol' hole for it in the Mac Pro. If you want a bunch of 'em, you can toss 'em in here...
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...ctb3ivkit0gb_thunderbay_4_four_bay_drive.html

There are other, similar products... There is no configuration of hard drives that benefits from being internal...

For people who use data, there's always the question of cost per TB, and classically, a bare drive invariably costs less than one that includes an external drive case.

For example, using your own examples, the generic USB-C 8TB HDD for $299 ... also sells for $250-$280 (depending on brand, etc) for a bare version. With the cost of an internal bay made hidden to us by the PC OEM, we see the $20-$50 per drive cost as an additional expense ... and even more so when we look at your $400 OWC four bay RAID box: that adds $100 per spindle.

And sure, the catch with this paradigm is that we think of empty internal bays in a PC tower as being "free", even though they're technically not.

if you have enough of them to saturate a cheap USB port, you would need four or more bays in the case - and that adds cost and bulk (more than buying a Thunderbolt enclosure that keeps up with 4-8 drives). If you have too many for Thunderbolt, they'd never fit in any conceivable case (except, perhaps for a rackmount storage server).

It really depends on what the use case (need) is: if its just for making routine data backups where performance doesn't matter all that much, then a USB-3 port & cheap enclosure is adequate and the backup strategy is going to employ multiple instances (for multiple copies) of single spindle drives. However, if the need is for a better level of performance without incurring the full cost of going to an SSD, then RAID still has its place and that $400 OWC box is part of the bill. Its more for the latter than RAID'ing internal bays is seen as a cost economization strategy.

 

[Nugget]

...a bare drive invariably costs less than one that includes an external drive case.

This is not always true.

 

[barmann]

Apologies for the delay in reading & posting (was out photographing waterfalls in Iceland)

I envy you . Was lucky enough to do that once myself , fond memories .
That midnight sun is something, isn't it ?

For people who use data, there's always the question of cost per TB, and classically, a bare drive invariably costs less than one that includes an external drive case.

In many cases, that is not correct, in particular for 2.5" HDDs .
The catch is, most times you don't get to know what exact drive model is inside the enclosure .

And sure, the catch with this paradigm is that we think of empty internal bays in a PC tower as being "free", even though they're technically not.

In a way they are free - a tower designed to host HDDs does not need to be more expensive than one without drive bays .
Development and manufacturing costs are about the same, the extra hardware is peanuts .
As discussed above, size, cooling/noise and weight can be a factor, though .
In that respect, they are not 'free' .

It really depends on what the use case (need) is: if its just for making routine data backups where performance doesn't matter all that much, then a USB-3 port & cheap enclosure is adequate and the backup strategy is going to employ multiple instances (for multiple copies) of single spindle drives. However, if the need is for a better level of performance without incurring the full cost of going to an SSD, then RAID still has its place and that $400 OWC box is part of the bill. Its more for the latter than RAID'ing internal bays is seen as a cost economization strategy.

I don't think using internal drives for those purposes is much of an argument anymore .
In my cMP, I run dual Velicorapors in Raid0 for fast-ish daily storage because I have the space, and those things are quiet and haven't died yet .
If I had to replace them with an SSD I wouldn't mind that at all .

However, I do need that storage for daily work - if I had to replace them with a m.2 blade instead of a SATA SSD , that would be a pain financially .
If I had to get an external enclosure as a replacement, that would be a pain in every respect .

 

[vailr]

Seagate Unveils 14 TB Consumer HDDs
https://www.anandtech.com/show/13347/seagate-unveils-14-tb-consumer-hdds

 

[danwells]

And it's actually available in stock at B&H as an external, while the internal is still inbound...
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...s_bbpr14000ent_blackbox_pro_14tb_7200rpm.html

These Glyph enclosures are really nice for single drives - I installed a couple of them for a friend with an iMac Pro recently...

 

[Biped]

And it's actually available in stock at B&H as an external, while the internal is still inbound...
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...s_bbpr14000ent_blackbox_pro_14tb_7200rpm.html

These Glyph enclosures are really nice for single drives - I installed a couple of them for a friend with an iMac Pro recently...

Someone needed help installing an external usb drive ?

 

[danwells]

Recommendations on what to do on the whole configuration (iMac Pro, so 450,332 options)! plus safe transfer of data from several places - no, he doesn't have any trouble with "plug it in to a USB port"...

 

[koyoot]

Latest Intel Roadmap.

Those "Refresh" architectures are called Rebranded Lake. No 10 nm CPUs till 2020, or later.

 

[zephonic]

The Multidock isn't normally used on or beside/under a desktiop. It is a rack mounted device ( horizontally oriented.).

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicmultidock

" ... Each disk slot supports user replaceable socket connector boards in case a connector is damaged in heavy use installations ..."

The next Mac Pro would probably get validated when operating horizontally, but that is extremely unlikely to be the focus of the design. Apple probably isn't going to sell option rack kit to put it into standard racks.
If they go deskside and make it a bit shorter ( vertical in nominal position) then it will be much less rack hostile than the old one.

I know that. Obviously, I didn't mean the exact same design, but the idea of hot-swappable 2.5" drive bays. I see video pros in LA using 2.5" SSDs the way they used to use tapes. BMD actually makes cassette-style cases for them.

Even just one hot-swappable drive slot in a new Mac Pro would be better than none.

 

[AidenShaw]

Even just one hot-swappable drive slot in a new Mac Pro would be better than none.

Unfortunately there's no standard form factor for hot swap drives - except for carrier-less 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives (and the slots that accept both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA drives). There are some proprietary 2.5" enterprise NVMe hot swap solutions.

An Apple-proprietary hot swap carrier would work for the all latest generation Apple workflows - but those are becoming rarer than hen's teeth.

Naked M.2 slots would work, but there are serious static-electricity problems with using M.2 drives as alternatives to SD cards.

 

[danwells]

Apple has never cared about "standard form factor" - as a matter of fact, they prefer "Apple proprietary, with some advantage we can point to to show why it costs more and you have to buy it from us". A hot-swappable Apple SSD cartridge would be a classic Apple feature - something that really does make people's lives easier, but also fills Apple's pockets. It would almost certainly be a regular NVMe SSD wrapped in a case that eliminated the static problem, with a connector that supported hot-swapping.

If I were to guess how it might be implemented, there would be one boot SSD that ran through the T2 chip, and couldn't be swapped (maybe soldered to the motherboard, maybe replaceable in some service procedure) plus somewhere from one to four slots for Apple SSDs (my initial guess would be two). They will probably require the OS to be on the T2-connected drive for security reasons...

 

[-hh]

(on Iceland)I envy you . Was lucky enough to do that once myself , fond memories . That midnight sun is something, isn't it ?

Trip was at the beginning of September, so didn't really have midnight sun. Long twilights though, which made it tough to stay up late when there might be Northern Lights to see, while still getting enough rest for proceeding on the next day's relocation around the ring.

(On HDD costs, packaged vs unpackaged)
In many cases, that is not correct, in particular for 2.5" HDDs .
The catch is, most times you don't get to know what exact drive model is inside the enclosure .

Agreed. In principle, the "drive without" should always cost less, but this competes with realties of sales volume, etc. And while it is tempting to buy an external HDD, the risk of not knowing how good/bad the drive inside is - - is what they're partially counting on.

(On the incremental expense of empty internal HDD bays)
In a way they are free - a tower designed to host HDDs does not need to be more expensive than one without drive bays .
Development and manufacturing costs are about the same, the extra hardware is peanuts .
As discussed above, size, cooling/noise and weight can be a factor, though .
In that respect, they are not 'free' .

Agreed. Just like the above "HDD with/without case" should in principle always be cheaper without, the market realities and other considerations can affect the retail price. Given that extra "air" inside a case doesn't cost much, nor does a standard SATA-3 port, a metal bracket, etc ... there really isn't much of a direct cost premium to the hardware differential, particularly when we're talking about a box that retails for $2.5K & up.

I don't think using internal drives for those purposes is much of an argument anymore .
In my cMP, I run dual Velicorapors in Raid0 for fast-ish daily storage because I have the space, and those things are quiet and haven't died yet. If I had to replace them with an SSD I wouldn't mind that at all .

Well, because the cMP never got SATA-3, you still would probably want to RAID0 a pair of SSDs to get the bandwidth up.

However, I do need that storage for daily work - if I had to replace them with a m.2 blade instead of a SATA SSD , that would be a pain financially .
If I had to get an external enclosure as a replacement, that would be a pain in every respect .

For certain capacities, an M.2 is probably a fair enough trade (on cost) to get higher-than-SATA bandwidth...but as danwells points out, there's also the (IMO high) risk that Apple could be looking at providing a "dock" style access to a previously internal bay which only accepts proprietary ($$$$$) Apple data storage 'cartridges'. This morphs into just yet another example of being asked to fork over to pay another 'Apple Tax' installment.

 

[zephonic]

Unfortunately there's no standard form factor for hot swap drives - except for carrier-less 2.5" and 3.5" SATA drives (and the slots that accept both 3.5" and 2.5" SATA drives). There are some proprietary 2.5" enterprise NVMe hot swap solutions.

?

I'm talking about hot-swappable SATA disks. The internal drive(s) should be the fastest possible PCIe/M2 of course, but having one or more 2.5" slots (like the Multidock) on the case would certainly be useful for AV guys.

 

[barmann]

?

I'm talking about hot-swappable SATA disks. The internal drive(s) should be the fastest possible PCIe/M2 of course, but having one or more 2.5" slots (like the Multidock) on the case would certainly be useful for AV guys.

I dunno, I think that would certainly drive up prices and increase case size quite a bit , which is much less of an issue with fixed internal SATA bays .
And due to cooling and breakage issues that come with hot swappable drives, I'd rather have them in an external enclosure .

 

[AidenShaw]

And due to cooling and breakage issues that come with hot swappable drives, I'd rather have them in an external enclosure .

Really. I like the hot swappable NVMe SSDs that plug into the ProLiants. No cooling or breakage issues that have come to mind.

 

[danwells]

I can't imagine an Apple docking bay being SATA-derived (whether standard or Appleified in some way, when they don't have a single SATA SSD in their current product line (even the ancient Mini gets a PCIe SSD when you upgrade to get rid of the spinner). It'll be some flavor of PCIe, whether it's soldered on, internally upgradeable or a hot-swappable dock (in which case there's almost certainly a soldered on system drive as well).

The real questions are how fast? and how proprietary?

 

[barmann]

Really. I like the hot swappable NVMe SSDs that plug into the ProLiants. No cooling or breakage issues that have come to mind.

Different kettle of fish though, isn't it ?
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I can't imagine an Apple docking bay being SATA-derived (whether standard or Appleified in some way, when they don't have a single SATA SSD in their current product line (even the ancient Mini gets a PCIe SSD when you upgrade to get rid of the spinner). It'll be some flavor of PCIe, whether it's soldered on, internally upgradeable or a hot-swappable dock (in which case there's almost certainly a soldered on system drive as well).

The real questions are how fast? and how proprietary?

Not sure where that docking bay idea is coming from, but whatever keeps the conversation going .

As for speed and proprietary solutions .
(Drive) speed doesn't matter . There already are non-proprietary solutions for all the speed you can afford .
More affordable solutions are plenty fast for many, if not most applications .

Proprietary is the only term that matters .
The more exclusive the next MP design will be , the more it becomes yet another fig leaf to hide Apple's increasingly 'smaller than average' package they bring to the game .

 

[Oculus Mentis]

An external array enclosure with 6 to 8 hot swappable SSDs with 10GbE and two TB3 ports, the size of two stacked mac minis and managed by a T2 chip would be a cute storage module in this modular macpro project...

I don't think however AAPL would like to re-enter the storage market after the Xserve Raid Array experience. Nevertheless, it would be cute...