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Oxide Computer: Docs

docs.oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#81

Post by throwawaylinux »

faitswulff wrote: post #42
solarkraft wrote: post #29

Finally 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…

One benefit is that they're competing in an industry where the time to get a sled up and running for compute can be measured in weeks (they say they've heard up to 90 days) whereas their solution is basically plug and play - Bryan was trying to get Steve to admit set up took "hours" whereas Steve was hedging and saying customers could get started "within a week." They go into more details on their podcast, and this s…

Do I have it right that they ship their own hypervisor (that's based on maybe Solaris, not KVM) as firmware? Let's assume a very small team can compete on a technical level, it still seems like it could cut out a lot of the potential market.

I can't imagine that large cloud / "web scale" companies would want that. Most want a fair bit of control of their own hypervisor and management stacks based around KVM. And "enterprise" type companies are going to have issues with certification I would have thought -- will RedHat, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, etc certify their supported products on top of this hypervisor? Seems like a difficult and expensive process.

So what's left? Companies that support their own virtual machine software but don't support their own hypervisor and don't like what's available from vmware or Microsoft or RedHat. A small niche. Or are my assumptions wrong?

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#82

Post by upon_drumhead »

sjdmdlakziggy wrote: post #63
tiffanyh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who's only dealt with commodity server hardware, these specs make me salivate Commodity servers have the same specs. Here’s a reseller of SuperMicro servers, where you can buy similar compute on the cheap. https://www.siliconmechanics.com/systems/servers/rackform

They are not even close to the same specs.

https://www.siliconmechanics.com/system/rackform-a235.v8.1/2...

This is pretty darn close to the "Gimlet" Compute Sleds

One 225W TDP 64-core AMD Milan CPU 1 TiB of DRAM across 16 DIMMs 12 front-facing hot-swappable PCIe Gen 4 U.2 storage devices 2 internal M.2 devices 2 ports of 100 GbE networking

Point for point, the same hardware as specified.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#83

Post by pitaj »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #52

I recently saw a horrible presentation by Microsoft on how they built the OpenAI supercomputer on Azure. (with custom bits). How would an Oxide computer systems look like for for an "OpenAI super computer" compared to Azure?

That kind of magnitude of compute is more datacenter level. But either way, you're probably better off buying one of the all-in-one tightly integrated solutions from Nvidia or Intel.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#85

Post by jclulow »

wmf wrote: post #62
mwcampbell wrote: post #60

I'm a little surprised that, according to the docs, "the Oxide rack does not come with any preloaded machine images" [1]. But I guess it makes sense that the initial, early-adopter customers wouldn't have a problem with rolling their own VM images. I'm at least glad that Oxide didn't decide to start by only allowing VMs that use a pre-defined set of pre-made images in some custom format. [1]: https://docs.oxide.compu…

The preloaded images would all be Solaris anyway. ;-)

We don't call it Solaris anymore! :P

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#86

Post by bpye »

solarkraft wrote: post #29

Finally 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…

It feels like they’re trying to give people the benefits that hyperscale cloud operators have, without being one?

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#87

Post by jitl »

solarkraft wrote: post #29

Finally 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…

Public cloud like AWS is a premium product. When your web scale business wants to increase profits by cutting costs and you’ve already done a few passes making your software run faster, owning your own metal & renting colo space starts looking like a big avenue for savings. Especially if you’re doing something bandwidth intensive, where AWS makes you pay through the nose. I think we’ll see a fair number of companies move back towards owning metal, especially if the metal is super easy to manage. I think the Oxide pitch is making owning racks sensible for ~2000 eng companies instead of ~20,000 eng companies.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#88

Post by bpye »

all2 wrote: post #9
dist1ll wrote: post #5

As someone who's only dealt with commodity server hardware, these specs make me salivate. And all these boot/management TUIs are just so satisfying to look at. (Sorry to be that guy, but just a friendly suggestion: high contrast dark themes are difficult to read for people with astigmatism. Especially since this is technical documentation, intended to be thoroughly read, you might want to consider a light theme toggl…

> sorry to be that guy ... astigmatism Darkreader is a lovely plugin that might make your life much easier: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/darkreader/ I believe there is a Chrome extension, too. It lets you set BG, FG, sepia, total contrast, etc. It is quite a neat piece of kit.

I would never have thought to use an extension intended for adding dark mode, to instead view dark mode websites in a light mode, but that makes total sense!

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#89

Post by superb_dev »

bpye wrote: post #86
solarkraft wrote: post #29

Finally 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…

It feels like they’re trying to give people the benefits that hyperscale cloud operators have, without being one?

That is exactly their goal. Hyperscale for the rest of us
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