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Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

oxide.computer

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Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#71
post #66
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with the concept. Does this mean that attestation to a different root of trust than Oxide will also be feasible, and that this is just a default?

Oxide makes the hardware, so it makes sense to use them as the root of trust since you already have to trust them to not make backdoored hardware. Why bother adding more parties? Also, for remote attestation to make sense, it needs to be done in the hardware itself (ie. keys burned into the silicon). I'm not sure how that's supposed to work if you add your own keys, or whether that would even make sense.

"it needs to be done in the hardware itself (ie. keys burned into the silicon)" - this isn't true; this is confusing Trusted Boot and Secure Boot, which are not the same thing (nor is it the only way of implementing Secure Boot).

Owner-controlled remote attestation is entirely viable, e.g. Talos II is capable of this with a FlexVer module.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#72
post #68
post #57

It sure looks pretty, but appears to be - - dedicated to virtualization, done their way - rather inflexible in hardware specs - vendor-locked at the rack - if you have hardware from someone else, it can't live in the same cabinet I guess if you just want a pretty data center in a box and look like what they consider a 'normal' enterprise to be, it might appeal. But I'm not sure how many people asked for Apple-style h…

Why is it important what kind of virtualization? It works and since it is built for this hardware it will likely be more reliable then anything you're putting together yourself. The specs are damn good. When it is all top-of-the-line, inflexibility is kind of a mute point. Where else are you going to go? > But I'm not sure how many people asked for Apple-style hardware in the DC. Well integrated, performant and relia…

> Why is it important what kind of virtualization?

Because if I ran this, would have to manage it. Given that I have lots of virtualization to manage already, I would want it to use the same tooling for rather obvious reasons.

> is pretty much all everyone running their own hardware is looking for.

I don't think you talk to many people who do this, but as someone who manages 8 figures worth of hardware, I can tell you that is absolutely not true.

> The specs are damn good. When it is all top-of-the-line, inflexibility is kind of a mute point. Where else are you going to go?

To some hardware that actually fits my use case, that is managable in an existing environment? Oh wait - I already have that. I mean, seriously - do you think they're the only shop selling nice machines?

The value-add is all wrong, unless you are a greenfield deployment willing to bet it all on this particular single vendor, and your needs match their offering.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#73
post #57

It sure looks pretty, but appears to be - - dedicated to virtualization, done their way - rather inflexible in hardware specs - vendor-locked at the rack - if you have hardware from someone else, it can't live in the same cabinet I guess if you just want a pretty data center in a box and look like what they consider a 'normal' enterprise to be, it might appeal. But I'm not sure how many people asked for Apple-style h…

"But I'm not sure how many people asked for Apple-style hardware in the DC."

It's probably selling to the "Amazon-style hardware in your DC market", which I think should be fairly ripe. Building your own private cloud from parts defeats a lot of the purpose...avoiding your own plumbing.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#75

>AMD MILAN Intel is losing on the client and server. everyone is jumping ship to either ARM or AMD for client/server. hopefully Intel new engineer CEO can turn it around like AMD engineer CEO (Lisa Su)

Few companies buy on pure performance. Right now, AMD has the performance kings and the price/performance kings.

Intel could win price/performance, but they would need to cannibalize their own low-end and mid-range market. If they could make a good bet that they would have high yield in one more cycle, that would make sense. If they don't think that will happen, there's nothing much that will save them, and they're extracting the money that they can right now.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#76
post #2

Who is the target customer for this?

I get the target of HyperConverged infrastructure. It's a pretty big market: potentially all private/colo datacenters. And there are only a few players left. Dell/EMC/VMWare, Nutanix, Cisco's schizophrenic offerings, a waning HP, cloud providers trying to make a 'hybrid' play, etc. And most don't buy one or two of these things. It's rows and rows.

But most of those are so entrenched and wrapped up in their customers. I imagine the target here is actually acquisition, it would just be too hard to get a foothold as an up-and-comer.

Also it usually means giving loaner gear to companies for an extended period for them to evaluate pre-purchase, showing your support, etc. That's a lot of up-front cost for someone without a warchest.

I'm also kind of surprised by the site. It sells to geeks well, but isn't the normal "look at our customers in key industry segments!", "something something Gartner magic quadrant", "whitepapers!" thing. Selling to execs on these things is usually a matter of convincing them they're not making a "bad" decision. They're "cool", but enough industry people agree with them that it's not career limiting if it doesn't pan out.

I like the idea of the product, and it would be nice to have another player. But it's like starting a new car company, and I feel like they're selling to mechanics.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#77

>AMD MILAN Intel is losing on the client and server. everyone is jumping ship to either ARM or AMD for client/server. hopefully Intel new engineer CEO can turn it around like AMD engineer CEO (Lisa Su)

Intel still has ~90% of x86 Server Market in unit Shipment, slightly higher in Revenue sold. And their renewed Roadmap from Pat Gelsinger seems to bring a lot of their product forward ( Rightly so ).

That is speaking as someone who wants AMD to grab more market shares ( and has been stating the same for nearly three years and constantly being told off by all AMD fans they are doing fine )

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#78
post #75

>AMD MILAN Intel is losing on the client and server. everyone is jumping ship to either ARM or AMD for client/server. hopefully Intel new engineer CEO can turn it around like AMD engineer CEO (Lisa Su)

Few companies buy on pure performance. Right now, AMD has the performance kings and the price/performance kings. Intel could win price/performance, but they would need to cannibalize their own low-end and mid-range market. If they could make a good bet that they would have high yield in one more cycle, that would make sense. If they don't think that will happen, there's nothing much that will save them, and they're e…

I thought M1 had the best price/performance numbers, too bad Apple does not sell CPUs.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#79

I don't know if I have a use for something like this, but the website aesthetics are just plain awesome.

Yeah, I noticed that too. The green wireframe looking stuff is actually text in spans/divs next to, or overlayed on pictures. The little "nodes" are this character, for example: ⎕. The effect is pretty unique.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#80
Looks fantastic, and the hardware specs appeal to me greatly - but I'm not sure there is an actual market outside the "cult of personality" bubble. A few SV wannabes will buy into this to trade off a Twitter relationship with the Oxide founders - but does anyone really see the IT teams at Daimler, Proctor & Gamble, Morgan Stanley... et al - actually going for this over HPE/Dell and AWS/Azure? We are a long way away from "Nobody ever got fired for buying from Oxide".
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