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Oxide Computer: Docs

docs.oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#151

Post by ahl »

realitythreek wrote: post #144
gorkish wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gene…

I always miss the live Discord call and never realized they were published to YT! Thanks for the notice.

Clearly we need to do much more self-promotion!

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#152

Post by jjav »

Aurornis wrote: post #96
EvanAnderson wrote: post #10

Everything about Oxide's gear sounds like fun. I imagine it must be a bit like what working with minicomputers in 70s thru the 90s was like. I did a little work in the late 90s with Alpha-based machines. I was impressed at those machines didn't seem like the hack-job crap that PC-based stuff was (with simulated chips from the early 1980's hiding out in dark corners because "compatibility") and still is today. I'm bet…

> 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…

> Apparently they pay engineers all the same comp

Yes, that is a sad point. I love Oxide and everything about them. It is the only company in Silicon Valley that I'm honestly kid-like excited about (I fake the "passion" for others but don't feel it). My partner is probably tired of hearing me drool about this one company I wish I could work for...

But with a family to support, it's never going to happen. The pay cut would be brutal, so I never apply. If I ever become an independently wealthy multimillionaire, the first thing I'll do it apply to Oxide. As long as I need a paycheck, it's impossible.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#153

Post by dasil003 »

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…

I am definitely not an infra engineer, but I see it as an attempt to fix problems that have accumulated over decades as standards calcified and no single vendor was able to improve due to interoperability issues. Some of these things can’t be tackled without a full end-to-end solution, hence the full server. It doesn’t mean components couldn’t be swappable in the future, but at the beginning it’s best to develop on a narrow set of hardware until a solid baseline of stability is reached. Sort of an Apple-like approach for large scale servers.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#154

Post by apple4ever »

bcantrill wrote: post #137
Aurornis wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 differen…

> 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.

I think you are missing that there are other reasons to avoid Oxide that doesn't have to do with optimizing for compensation. They may very well be optimizing for something else, but compensation is still a data point and while they may take less money, maybe not too much less.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#155

Post by jdougan »

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...

Please bring Jon Blow back!

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#156

Post by bcantrill »

apple4ever wrote: post #154
bcantrill wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differen…

> 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. I think you are missing that there are other reasons to avoid Oxide that doesn't have to do with optimizing for compensation. The…

Oh, there are definitely many reasons to not work at Oxide -- not least that it's hard, grueling work! (Indeed, part of our process is getting candidates sufficiently understanding what the work actually entails to allow them to make a decision for themselves.)

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#157

Post by mst »

actionfromafar wrote: post #146
mst wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nev…

I hate bad transcripts.

The automatic transcribers have (pretty recently) reached the point where I'd rather have their output than not.

This came as something of a surprise to me - six months ago I'd likely have been enthusiastically agreeing with you.

As an example, the transcript tab on https://www.thebulwark.com/podcast-episode/tom-nichols-jack-... was pretty readable to me in spite of the errors. Whether you'll find it the same is, of course, a separate question.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#158

Post by steveklabnik »

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?

This is the most succinct pitch for Oxide, the problem is that many people do not know what the hyperscalers even are, so it doesn't land with a lot of folks.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#159

Post by steveklabnik »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #115

As an on-prem sysadmin, I'm not sure I will ever in my life work on an environment that has the minimum specifications of an Oxide system. Every entire datacenter I've worked in has less total capacity than a single "sled" here. Are there intentions to go smaller than this?

> Are there intentions to go smaller than this?

(my personal perspective as an Oxide employee)

Not in the near future, when a lot of the design relies on the benefits of scale, scaling down kind of removes some of the benefits. But also just like, things are still early, there's not a lot of choice period.

That said, we do have a lot of fans who want to buy something, and it would be cool to figure out how to do that. But also, we gotta like, make and ship the primary product. So we'll see.

Re: Oxide Computer: Docs

#160

Post by Timothycquinn »

yencabulator wrote: post #147
kaliszad wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use Crucible on top of ZFS. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/crucible I don't think they have anything for S3-like service but there are other options for that, e.g. https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr or MinIO. I am not sure whether they have their own SSDs or use of the shelf SSDs just with their firmware or something.

They implemented a block store with replication from scratch? That's kinda brave, considering that that's a project big enough to justify full startups for!

However, the folks at Oxide are at the top of the game for this space with dozens of years of experience in building and testing such systems. Secondly Oxide's crucible stack is completely written from scratch in Rust, which dramatically reduces failure modes common to such stacks, which are often written in C / C++.
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