I’d love to see someone provide a turnkey managed bare metal container platform, complete with L4 / L7 routing. I haven’t heard if oxide has a container play, and I suspect it may require virtualization based on their choice of host OS.
Oxide Computer: Docs
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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#32Anyone know if a documentation framework is used for this site, or whether it is bespoke?
Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#33Oxide's "On the Metal" podcast is an incredibly fun deep dive into technical issues no one should have to deal with as told by people who lived them. "Deep" as in: software DRAM drivers, Ring -1 security, bespoke motherboard designs... I only wish there were more episodes. https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal I just noticed they have a second podcast. I'll assume it's just as good. https://oxide.computer/podc…
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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#34Oxide is an HN darling. I have never seen anything even close to negative about them here. I hope someone writes a case-study about this. It seems to be a mix of the charisma of the team/founders and their product that makes everyone love them. I would put Wireguard/Tailscale in the same category as well.
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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#35I’d love to see someone provide a turnkey managed bare metal container platform, complete with L4 / L7 routing. I haven’t heard if oxide has a container play, and I suspect it may require virtualization based on their choice of host OS.
By "L4 / L7 routing" do you mean specifically something that works like Amazon's Application Load Balancer and Network Load Balancer for Kubernetes? And by "turnkey managed" you mean, you """just""" """configure""" """IP addresses""" and it """all just works"""?
You can certainly install Ubuntu on a very powerful machine with a WAN interface (e.g., a NIC connected to a residential cable internet connection). Then, use something like k0s to provision other bare metal workers. Those three steps, and you've got a "bare metal container platform." You don't need a "LoadBalancer", you can specify that nginx-controller runs on the host network of specifically the machine with the WAN interface and configure its service's external IP to the WAN IP, and now you support Ingress.
But how do you imagine having multiple LoadBalancer resources without multiple IPs? And how do you imagine having multiple IPs without ARIN? The turnkey challenging part is the public IPv4 addresses, not the platform.
Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#36Anyone know if a documentation framework is used for this site, or whether it is bespoke?
It’s bespoke. Remix + AsciiDoc + OpenAPI.
Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#37Finally I actually understand what they're building. Now I must ask: Why? On-prem servers aren't a new invention. The market seems pretty saturated (and shrinking). Virtualization isn't a new invention either. The market seems pretty well served, at least commercially. Can the integration of both be a convincing enough advantage? The management UI certainly looks nice; it's something I'd like to have on my KVM box at…
YOLO - sometimes it's worth paying more money for something someone has actually sat down and designed properly.
Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#38I am super interested in learning more about the storage subsystem! I figured they'd be using ZFS, given the people involved, but it appears they've also gone ahead and built a clustered FS (crucible) on top of it? I figured something like that would be necessary to handle fault tolerance at the gimlet level. (Losing an entire shelf / drive controller, etc.) Getting ZFS to go multi-node is surely a neat trick.
Second to that I just want to say the presentation of these docs is top notch. (I so desperately wish I was the target customer for these systems; reading these docs makes me want to do terrible things to my electrical service and play with one of these racks.)
Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#39Oxide's "On the Metal" podcast is an incredibly fun deep dive into technical issues no one should have to deal with as told by people who lived them. "Deep" as in: software DRAM drivers, Ring -1 security, bespoke motherboard designs... I only wish there were more episodes. https://oxide.computer/podcasts/on-the-metal I just noticed they have a second podcast. I'll assume it's just as good. https://oxide.computer/podc…
This sounds like a great listen. Thanks for mentioning it
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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs
#40After giving the "Known Behavior and Limitations" a scroll here https://docs.oxide.computer/release-notes/system/1-0-0
It seems a little... half baked? Especially for a company whose specialty is the integrated management platform. Interested to see customer reviews.