Live data from Hacker News

Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

oxide.computer

171–180 of 264 posts

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. ;)

Smaller teams will always win the communication overhead comparison even without thinking about organizational trees and therefore indirections too much. Communication is one of the biggest problems in organizations and the society, so more direct and therefore clearer communication can make the organization more efficient and keep the spirits high. It also doesn't hurt to have a team made only of extremely senior engineers or other professionals in their field. Even better, if those engineers are great personalities too. There is only one culprit: you have to have a very capable driver to put this powerful engine to good use so to say. If you drive the powerful engine in the wrong direction, you are actually putting more, not less distance between the destination and your current position. It seems, the goal for Oxide Computer is clear and I wholeheartedly wish you the best of luck.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#172
post #105

0xide Computer Company deserves to do well. This is a solid private-cloud play aimed at those corporations (probably mainly financials, but other sectors too I'm sure...) who don't want to outsource to the likes of AWS / GCP.

Healthcare is definitely another. Government, too (especially non-US).

They are going to have to get their employees to stop burning down federal courthouses first. They'll never get a FCL with that history.

Steve is a well-known outspoken anarchist that applauds violence for his politics and Bryan isn't much better with his woke agenda.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving that RAM for ZFS L2 ARC perhaps? I don't think they would use Illumos as the hypervisor OS without also using OpenZFS with it. They also need some for management, the control UI, a DB for metrics and more. Btw. if I count correctly, they have 20 SSD slots per node (if a node is full width) and 16 nodes. They would need 2 TB to reach 1 PB of "raw" capacity with the obvious redundancy overhead of ~ 20%. It is a…

I'm fairly confident the nodes are half width; if you look at the latches it very much would appear you can pull out half of every 2u at once, and if you look at the rear there's 2 net cables going into each side.

Good observation, it looks like it. It probably makes upgrading/ maintenance easier since the unit of failure is smaller. Of course, you can also only tackle stuff, that demands no more than 64 cores before you have to rearchitecture your monolith into a distributed system, which has lots of overhead.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#174
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…

I was going to shrug at this a little until I saw some of the names. Good luck.

Not sure that 'with the software baked in' is a good phrase to use. Sounds inflexible. Perhaps a different phrasing would help?

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#175
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is you will use a API to provision virtual machines on top of the Oxide hypervisor/software stack, which is bhyve running on Illumos. So you can still just run your favorite Linux distro or windows or a BSD if you want[1]. [1]: https://soundcloud.com/user-760920229/why-your-servers-suck-...

bhyve? what happened to the KVM port?

Apparently bhyve will be replacing KVM going forward, this article has a list of reasons[1].

[1]: https://omnios.org/info/bhyve

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#176
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…

Companies have been acquired to shut down their product line before.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#177
post #55
post #3

I kind of want one of these in my home, I wonder what the price range will be.

Now I just like the idea of you telling the electrician that you need a 3-phase >5kVA PDU. :)

Hahaha I have a good source of VFDs which may be able to do the job.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#178
post #122

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…

Isn't that what some of your old Sun compatriots thought with DSSD? :) Congrats on the announcement, here's hoping you're right! This looks too interesting to be swallowed by Oracle or HPe.

See, my immediate reaction was that Oxide is by Sun people who are still scarred by that acquisition; they'll fight tooth and nail to avoid a repeat and if it did get forced through there would be an immediate and complete exodus.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#179

Looks like a white labeled viking VDS2249R running custom software.

This is not my area of expertise, but it does look like that[0]. That "custom software," though, is where the magic often lies. As a software person that worked at hardware companies for most of my career, I know all too well, how disrespectful hardware people are of software. If they have a good software-respecting management chain, then it might be pretty awesome. [0] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/viking…

Let's be honest, software people are pretty disrespectful about hardware, too.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#180
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that what some of your old Sun compatriots thought with DSSD? :) Congrats on the announcement, here's hoping you're right! This looks too interesting to be swallowed by Oracle or HPe.

See, my immediate reaction was that Oxide is by Sun people who are still scarred by that acquisition; they'll fight tooth and nail to avoid a repeat and if it did get forced through there would be an immediate and complete exodus.

Well, that one too. Honestly, one of the consequences of having a team consisting mostly (but not entirely!) of industry vets: we've collectively seen a lot of shit. In fact, a topic I would never want to bring up among Oxide employees: who has had an acquisition in their career gone the worst? There are just too many contenders, which itself is a sad commentary on the industry!
Post reply on HN