Mac Pro fanbois can rack 'em and stack 'em like real sysadmins

US company prepares 6U, 6xMac Pro rack for the data centre

US company H-Squared is a little closer to releasing a shelf that will make it possible to rack and stack six of the the new Mac Pros into a 6U space.

The Mac Pro can be equipped with Intel's Xeon E5-2697 v2, a 12-core, 2.7 Ghz CPU with a 30M cache. Six Mac pros equipped with that CPU in a 6U space would put 72 cores at your command.

That's a handy number but not one that will see server-makers looking over their shoulder in the direction of Cupertino, as plenty of servers can offer better core density in a variety of form factors.

Throw in the fact that MacOS is not exactly the operating system enterprise software vendors make their first development priority and it's clear the Mac Pro is not going to be a serious data centre contender.

Then there's H-Squared's admission that it you'll need to figure out how to cool a six-cylinder Apple engine located in its racks, which probably kills off the idea of a Mac-powered data centre for any but the very determined or unusually ardent.

But as the pics below from H-Squared Tweets show, the rack would look great.

@hazenet @lamw @eddielowrey Here's the 6-cpu option. pic.twitter.com/m5VTvfozcG

— H-Squared (@hsqllc) January 23, 2014

First Mac Pro rack shelf prototype just about done and ready for testing. pic.twitter.com/H3lOHnGeOf

— H-Squared (@hsqllc) February 19, 2014

And titter not, ye data centre operators. H-Squared already sells similar racks for Mac Minis, so there's clearly some demand for this kind of kit out there. ®