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Oxide Computer: Docs

docs.oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#131

Post by solarkraft »

rtpg wrote: post #61
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…

The short answer is that on-prem is used by a lot of companies for many reasons that go beyond "legacy/people don't know about cloud" (and even go beyond "regulatory environments"!), and these boxes are meant for people who have serious requirements. I'd recommend the O+F ep posted in sibling, but I think here the pitch is "well you need this hardware anyways right? How about buying one that's easy to use and doesn't…

Thanks, I think now I get the excitement (from the engineering perspective more than the business one)! "Fixing everything" is probably everyone's dream.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#132

Post by throwawaylinux »

panick21_ wrote: post #117
throwawaylinux wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "ent…

I think quite often when we assume 'most want to fair bit of control' is just not true. Enterprises want something that just works, they want control if they can't have something that just works. If you have a team that is struggling building an internal cloud with all this control (and problems) and all this commodity hardware (and its problems) then maybe they would be happy to switch to something that just works.…

> I think quite often when we assume 'most want to fair bit of control' is just not true. Enterprises want something that just works, they want control if they can't have something that just works.

That's not what I'm assuming here. Read carefully, I divide the market into 3 categories. Those who support their own VM image software and hypervisors, those who support neither, and those who support VM image but not hypervisor.

First is Amazon, Google, Facebook and the like (and it's not an assumption we can see their public contributions to KVM, QEMU, etc., and hear their talks about some of what they use internally). Second is "enterprise" who wants something that just works. Third is ? and would they want to support their software on a niche hypervisor?

> If that was the case and nobody running any of these would run their rack, then I wouldn't think they would not have received any funding. But I don't know enough about these certification process to really comment.

Well it is the case that enterprise (supported) software is not just supported on any hypervisor. https://access.redhat.com/articles/973163 RHEL runs on their own KVM as well as MS, VMware, some cloud vendors. Some application software also gets certified to hardware and hypervisors, not just operating system (e.g., SAP does this).

> Non of these come with a fully integrated rack.

It's not fully integrated if it doesn't come with the guest software though, is it?

> The competition would be somebody willing to buy a rack of Dell servers with VMWare software. Or somebody willing to buy a rack of Dell server and then use RedHat and set up all their own cloud style infrastructure.

Right. And the problem for Oxide is that the competition will have fully certified and supported operating system and application software for their virtual machines.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#133

Post by [deleted] »

bcantrill wrote: post #102
Aurornis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I imagine it must be a bit like what working with minicomputers in 70s thru the 90s was like. I had a chance to talk to someone who worked at Oxide once. I got excited because my experience matches up nicely with their products on several levels. The person got excited as well and started talking about how to interview there, but the conversation got kind of weird. They kept emphasizing how important it was to not…

This conversation strikes me as unlikely on several levels. First, no one would have coached you on "how to interview at Oxide" because that's not where the process starts -- it starts with you preparing your materials.[0] (Our review of the materials constitutes ~95% of our process.) Second, we have always been very explicit about compensation (that is, we ourselves brought it up early in conversations); no one at O…

[deleted]

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#134

Post by gorkish »

LoganDark wrote: post #26
corysama wrote: post #20

Oxide'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…

Are these available in text or article format?

O+F is posted to youtube, I get the auto-generated transcript from there. It's unscripted/unstructured, so if you are primarily wanting to hear discussion of the oxide hardware/software/progress it's pretty difficult to consume as an audio program.

This is not a dig on the program at all; I'm glad they are making the time to produce it, and I'd rather they spend their effort getting racks out the door instead of generating marketing hype.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#135

Post by mhh__ »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #80
mhh__ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YOLO - sometimes it's worth paying more money for something someone has actually sat down and designed properly.

So what has been designed properly and what hasn't?

The random piles of servers in most offices above a certain headcount

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#136

Post by mst »

actionfromafar wrote: post #123
mst wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please consider generating some sort of automated transcript from these. I'd hope your target audience would understand the limitations of such a thing, and I'm probably not the only person who'd rather read than listen even with the obvious caveats. (these days automated transcripts seem to be no harder to mentally fix up the errors in as I read them than "somebody typing fast on a software keyboard and suffering th…

They could probably have someone proofread the transcripts, there aren't that many episodes.

I was going for "set up some code once and don't think about it again" to maximise the odds of the idea sounding tempting.

Proofreading would set up an expectation on the part of readers that it -had- been proofread and corrected and therefore a commitment to perform a repeated "boring but important" task going forwards for whoever's doing said proofreading.

That way would likely lie either delayed transcripts or never getting to initial activation energy to provide anything at all.

So I think "add a quick bit of code to your podcast publishing workflow and a CAVEAT IN BIG LETTERS" is better to do first.

If it turns out enough people care about the transcript, doing it a more labour intensive nicer way later is something they can decide, well, later.

Shipping is feature zero, as ever.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#137

Post by bcantrill »

Aurornis wrote: post #129
bcantrill wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This conversation strikes me as unlikely on several levels. First, no one would have coached you on "how to interview at Oxide" because that's not where the process starts -- it starts with you preparing your materials.[0] (Our review of the materials constitutes ~95% of our process.) Second, we have always been very explicit about compensation (that is, we ourselves brought it up early in conversations); no one at O…

> First, no one would have coached you on "how to interview at Oxide" because that's not where the process starts I was using “interview” as a generic term for applying to a company, not literally referring to your internal process. I didn’t interview with or even pursue Oxide after the conversation (and never said I did) This all came up because I asked the person what the equity compensation was like. Not an unreas…

It definitely wouldn't be viewed as a negative to talk about it, and in fact our transparency on this topic makes it very easy to talk about directly. So we absolutely don't discourage talking about it -- but it's also true that people for whom the compensation is going to make Oxide impossible do self-select out. And that's okay! People have different needs at different stages of their career, and there are different things that they want; there is nothing wrong with optimizing for compensation -- but it's also true that Oxide is very unlikely to be a fit for someone optimizing for compensation, for many reasons.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#138

Post by howinteresting »

dang wrote: post #76
howinteresting wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We didn't shadowban them, we told them we were banning them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916347 , we told them why, and it wasn't the reason you've presumed. When people presume things about moderation, they almost always get it wrong. That's a pity because all anyone has to do to get the correct answer is ask us. If you see an account that's banned and you don't think it should be, please let us know at h…

[flagged]

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#139

Post by pjmlp »

bcantrill wrote: post #41
corysama wrote: post #20

Oxide'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…

For whatever it's worth, I think the reason the doc site was submitted to HN recently is in fact because of our recent episode on the frontend.[0] We have really enjoyed doing Oxide and Friends, and if you're an On the Metal listener, we think you'll find a lot to like! [0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-fronten...

By the way, Robot was initially tested at Nokia Networks Oy, and we on the NetAct business unit weren't that found of it.

Otherwise, another interesting episode.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#140

Post by jeffrallen »

dsies wrote: post #77
benrockwood wrote: post #14

It's great to see Oxide shipping. They have an incredibly talented team thats worked very hard for a long time in the best tradition of Sun Microsystems.

Not being pedactic, I swear :) Can you elaborate on the Sun comparison? I am a huge fan of Sun and what they did for computing at large - designing hardware, creating specs, their contributions to evolving unix and so on. I'm not sure how Oxide compares. Unless you're talking about "in the spirit of Sun".

Sun was a combination hardware and software shop, which Bryan appreciated and has tried to replicate at Oxide. The only reason they have a chance today is because the hardware/firmware interface in most servers is terrible quality.
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