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Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

oxide.computer

141–150 of 264 posts

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#141
Hmm.

They basically reinvented mainframes. Seems it has a lot in common with Z series.

Scalable locked in hardware, virtualization, reliability, engineered for hardware swaps, upgrades.

A proprietary operating system (?) from what someone said. (Offshoot of Solaris +++ (???) By that I mean that most of it, or all of it might be open sourced forks, but it will be an OS only meant to run on their systems.

(It would be fun to get it working at home, on a couple of PCs or a bunch of PIs)

They lack specialized processors to offload some workloads to.

Perhaps in modern terms shelfs of GPUs or a shelf fast FPGA , DSP processors. The possibilities are huge.

I didn't find any mention of from what I read.

They also lack the gigantic legacy effort to be compatible, which is a good thing.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#142
post #9

This looks interesting (although I'm not in the target market, too small)... But if I were looking at this, judging from the quality of people they've amassed in their engineering team, is there any chance they won't be acquired in 6 months? To anyone looking to take a bet on this, what is the answer to "what's your plan for when your stellar team gets acquired?" And what answer will satisfy that buyer? Update: Addin…

Hi! So, at every step -- from conception to funding to building the team and now building the product -- we have done so to build a big, successful public company. Not only do we (the founders) share that conviction, but it is shared by our investors and employees as well. For better or for ill, we are -- as we memorably declared to one investor -- ride or die. Also, if it's of any solace, I really don't think any of…

Unfortunately you didn’t pivot to becoming a podcast company. But this looks cool

I hope you drop a new episode soon

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? It's still rack-mountable workstation-class hardware that will probably be running on Apple Silicon at some point. And it will probably be possible to boot Linux on it, similar to existing M1 Macs. That's pretty indistinguishable from many servers.

You seem to be thinking that a server and a workstation are the same, ignoring that server skus need oob management, apis, hardware support and so many other things as table stakes

Did Xserve have any of that stuff?

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#144
It seems like a lot of Oxide information is currently hiding out in podcasts and other media - does anyone know how the AuthN, AuthZ, ACL system is going to work?

One of the most powerful elements of the trust root system is in audit ability and access control for both service-to-service and human-to-system aspects and I'm really interested in seeing how this plays out.

For example, a service mesh where hosts can be identified securely and authorized in a specific role unlocks a lot of low-friction service-to-service security. I'm curious what Oxide plan to provide in this space API and SDK wise.

I see some Zanzibar related projects on their GitHub, so it can be assumed the ACL system will be based on the principles there - but that's more a framework than an implementation.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#145
post #9

This looks interesting (although I'm not in the target market, too small)... But if I were looking at this, judging from the quality of people they've amassed in their engineering team, is there any chance they won't be acquired in 6 months? To anyone looking to take a bet on this, what is the answer to "what's your plan for when your stellar team gets acquired?" And what answer will satisfy that buyer? Update: Addin…

Hi! So, at every step -- from conception to funding to building the team and now building the product -- we have done so to build a big, successful public company. Not only do we (the founders) share that conviction, but it is shared by our investors and employees as well. For better or for ill, we are -- as we memorably declared to one investor -- ride or die. Also, if it's of any solace, I really don't think any of…

Your approach to pay is really refreshing and attractive as an engineer, and also seems like the exact type of thing most VC or larger tech firms would really hate. That alone feels like evidence of your conviction

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#146
post #9

This looks interesting (although I'm not in the target market, too small)... But if I were looking at this, judging from the quality of people they've amassed in their engineering team, is there any chance they won't be acquired in 6 months? To anyone looking to take a bet on this, what is the answer to "what's your plan for when your stellar team gets acquired?" And what answer will satisfy that buyer? Update: Addin…

Going by that logic, you should never take a chance on a bad company because they are bad, and a good company because they are too good and might get acquired. So should you just never rely on a small company for anything?

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#147

Hmm. They basically reinvented mainframes. Seems it has a lot in common with Z series. Scalable locked in hardware, virtualization, reliability, engineered for hardware swaps, upgrades. A proprietary operating system (?) from what someone said. (Offshoot of Solaris +++ (???) By that I mean that most of it, or all of it might be open sourced forks, but it will be an OS only meant to run on their systems. (It would be…

Their approach to reliability isn't quite on par with mainframes, AIUI. At least, not yet. And the programming model is also quite different - a mainframe can seamlessly scale from lots of tiny VM workloads (what Oxide seems to be going for) to large vertically-scaled shared-everything SSI, and anything in between.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! So, at every step -- from conception to funding to building the team and now building the product -- we have done so to build a big, successful public company. Not only do we (the founders) share that conviction, but it is shared by our investors and employees as well. For better or for ill, we are -- as we memorably declared to one investor -- ride or die. Also, if it's of any solace, I really don't think any of…

Your approach to pay is really refreshing and attractive as an engineer, and also seems like the exact type of thing most VC or larger tech firms would really hate. That alone feels like evidence of your conviction

Ha! Well, I think our investors think we're very idiosyncratic -- but they also can't help but admire the results: a singular team, drawn in part by not having to worry about the Game of Thrones that is most corporate comp structures. ;)

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! So, at every step -- from conception to funding to building the team and now building the product -- we have done so to build a big, successful public company. Not only do we (the founders) share that conviction, but it is shared by our investors and employees as well. For better or for ill, we are -- as we memorably declared to one investor -- ride or die. Also, if it's of any solace, I really don't think any of…

Unfortunately you didn’t pivot to becoming a podcast company. But this looks cool I hope you drop a new episode soon

We're getting there! My second shot was yesterday, and Steve and Jess are both completely done -- so we expect to get back to the garage soon! In the meantime, fellow Oxide engineer Adam Leventhal and I have been doing a Twitter Space every Monday at 5p Pacific; so far, it's been incredible with some amazing people dropping by -- come hang out!

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! So, at every step -- from conception to funding to building the team and now building the product -- we have done so to build a big, successful public company. Not only do we (the founders) share that conviction, but it is shared by our investors and employees as well. For better or for ill, we are -- as we memorably declared to one investor -- ride or die. Also, if it's of any solace, I really don't think any of…

Your approach to pay is really refreshing and attractive as an engineer, and also seems like the exact type of thing most VC or larger tech firms would really hate. That alone feels like evidence of your conviction

https://oxide.computer/blog/compensation-as-a-reflection-of-...
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