hi everyone Aaron here for ZolloTech and the Mac Pro has been out for a little
while and you've probably seen this version this is the normal provision
that you would buy in a normal workplace but if you have a need to kind of have
one in a server environment Apple also makes a different variant called the
rack mount version and it's five hundred dollars more and it's designed to be in
an area where you might have servers or network gear and have it mounted in a
server rack so I had a chance to take a look at one of those unbox it and then
see it in a situation where it's actually redundant to another Mac Pro
and recording live videos so we'll go ahead and unbox the Mac Pro now and then
we'll take a look at what it's doing at the end of the video where it's actually
recording live video streams where it's crucial not to lose that information now
let's go ahead and remove the shipping package then we can remove the top off
of the box set it aside and then we'll undo the velcro straps on both sides now
this looks the same as my Mac Pro setup so far and then we'll remove the top of
the box and inside the top of the box you have a couple pull tabs for
recycling and then let's take a look at our accessories that come with it now
depending on what you ordered you'll have a trackpad and a mouse or one of
the other and then also you have a braided USB see two lightning cables so
it's really nice it's cloth and grated and then we have the Magic Mouse too and
this is a little bit different color than the standard one it's silver on the
bottom and black on the top so it's a little bit unique and then also we have
the Magic Trackpad which is actually black on top and it's the only way to
get it is through buying a Mac Pro so it's really nice it's normal lightning
and everything just a different color on the other side we also have our keyboard
and this one is also a little bit different silver and black so it's all
specific to the Mac Pro it's your typical Apple keyboard with the numeric
keypad let's go ahead and remove it out of the box so we'll pick up the server
here move it aside let's take a look at the bottom of the box we have a little
pamphlet here and then your power cable underneath and in this
comes a booklet for Mac Pro and it's specific to the server variant so it
looks a little different and shows you the accessories included and has a
warranty card and then also has gigantic Apple stickers so just as expected we
get Apple stickers as well now also in the bottom we have a braided
power cable this is really thick and very nice and you'll see it's braided
here and another thing is it's actually metal on the end it's not plastic so
it's a very high quality now on the sides if we remove the cardboard or
remove them from both sides that's where the rails should clip on and let's
remove the actual cloth covering that it comes in so we'll take that off and
remove the plastic from the top and then we'll remove the cloth from the back now
well also have to lift it up to get the cloth out from under it and it's pretty
heavy as well and then let's remove the plastic from around the outside
now on the back you have the standard i/o you have a 3.5 millimeter jack to
Thunderbolt 3 and 2 USB a and then on the bottom because this has the 580 X we
have 2 HDMI and then we have our power and 2 10 gig Ethernet now the Mac Pro
server opens from the top or the bottom depending on how you're using it and
it's got a nice aluminum panel this is for the memory and this is just really
high quality these latches and then you can see it's the same sort of memory
removal as the other Macs so if you pop off these covers here we have all of our
memory underneath and this has 48 gigabytes of RAM and this can be
upgraded in the future and of course if you are upgrading you've got a little
guide on the best way to place them now on the side of the Mac Pro server you've
got three little nub sticking out and that's where you'll attach the rails now
if we take a look at the front it's got the same pattern as the normal Mac Pro
and let's close the panel on the side or bottom and let's take the top cover off
so it pops open like this and you'll see the Mac Pro looks very familiar at this
point it's not identical but very similar it's got the radiant profile e^x
in it and this is a 16 core processor we'll put the top back on and we'll take
a look at the rails now rails come with this so you can mount it in a server
rack we'll open it up here it comes packaged separately and then inside are
the server rails and this box is even nice just like the Mac Pro box you've
got a little elastic strap here to hold on to these even though you don't really
need it you'll see it says Mac Pro rack mount rails so let's go ahead and open
this up
we'll open the top here and these are probably the nicest package server rails
I've ever seen so we'll take off the paper pieces here holding them together
it's got plastic on the end as well there little end caps for the server
rails even in the package so everything is super nice and of course you're never
going to see these things again but it was nice of them to do that and let's
take a look at the rail itself so it should slot into the rail pretty easily
and they look pretty heavy-duty they're ball bearing server rails and let's take
a look at how they go on to the side of the Mac Pro they also included these
quick release buttons so if you have this sort of server rack that will work
with these it makes it super convenient
now once they're in place you push the little button on the front of the
chassis and slide the rail out and they're incredibly smooth just like you
would expect and then you pull a little tab and they slide back in this is the
rack that the Mac pros will occupy and they take up 5u of space so they're
pretty large and the noise is typical of a server environment where you care
about optimum performance is opposed to noise now this setup is actually
redundant we have the exact same computer in another slot in the rack so
they're both recording video one is recording from 8 to 16 cameras at once
in 1080i at 59.94 in pro res 422 at 1 gigabyte per minute for each camera
they're actually Panasonic varicams one Mac Pro is a primary one is a backup the
primary actually captures two ass an array or a huge storage array over fibre
channel with 110 terabytes of storage and then also the other Mac is capturing
internally to an 8 terabytes o WC Drive now with the Mac Pros in the rack you
can just open them up and slide them out very easily so that you can gain access
either to the internals or to the back of the map
so you have plenty of room to work on both and they'll actually slide out a
little bit further you pull the tabs slide it back in and it locks into place
now you can see both math Pro servers extended all the way out in front of the
rack which is a little bit scary with all that weight hanging out there but it
seems to hold them without a problem now one thing to know is if you take the top
off while the Mac Pro is on the fans actually spin up to full speed so this
is something you can't do with the standard macro that you can do with the
server and you can hear how loud those fans are now this Mac Pro is in a live
environment but before you put it into a live-work space you want to test it out
and some of the preliminary testing was really impressive so in order to really
push the system 40 video streams were pushed at it at once so there were 16 4
2 2 video streams at once then on top of that there were 16 more in h.264 and
then 8 more on top of that with HEV C or h.265 and when doing that it was writing
3,000 megabytes per second to the drive and that was really all you could push
the internal drive now these will be going over a SAN array so you may be
able to push more but just to the internal drive when it was testing
that's kind of where it maxed out but when it was doing that it was only using
12 percent CPU and about 60 to 80 percent of the GPU with 40 video streams
now keep in mind in the live environment it's only going to be recording 8 to 16
of these at any given time so that's incredibly impressive numbers and of
course you can just upgrade it as needed in the future now when it was recording
in real time during live production it was actually using a little bit more CPU
because of the codecs being used but it was pushing it at 1,000 megabytes per
second of information recording 8 streams of 4 to 2 so it was really
impressive to see what it was doing because prior to that they were only
recording 6 streams on a 2013 Mac Pro and that was actually pushing the CPU to
60 to 70% so this is a big improvement it will actually use less power from the
CPU and of course it cannot be expanded over time if they need to add more
cameras or different codecs and things like that overall I think this was
really impressive to see in a live production environment and it's really
interesting to see how sort of set up woodwork in something
that's so crucial is live video but let me know your thoughts about it in the
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you next time