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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#181

Post by pmontra »

nickik wrote: post #63
pmontra wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site is really hard to navigate. I eventually looked at the footer and found a link to the technical specifications https://oxide.computer/product/specifications They give an idea of the beast, especially the dimensions and weight Dimensions H x W x D 2354mm (92.7") x 600mm (23.7”) x 1060mm (41.8") Weight Up to ~2,518 lbs (~1,145 kg) It's a rack. BTW, they are following some no pictures policy. I found only a few…

Literally on the main page: https://oxide.computer/

Indeed, which demonstrates that an explicit link to Home in a visible place is never a bad idea. I didn't click on 0xide in the top left even if that's a common shortcut to the home and I didn't notice the link in the footer, which is where you bury the least interesting stuff. I kept clicking on the text links in the top bar.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#182

Post by cpuguy83 »

steve1977 wrote: post #98
growse wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. The operative bit of "cloud" is "provision and de-provision instantly via an API, without much concern for what's going on inderneath", not "lives in someone else's datacenter".

It’s called cloud because it’s not in your own data center. Usually cloud symbols were used in network diagrams to depict systems/networks outside of our concern. Also you could don’t really get elasticity with a system like this. If anything, that would be the operative bit for me.

I work on Azure. Is it not a cloud for me because of where I work?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#183

Post by darkwater »

dmix wrote: post #164
yardie wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mentioned it really quickly in their Oxide an Friends podcast but, IIRC, prices start at $500k. Some of the audience asked if they were going to do a smaller configuration like half or quarter rack. And they said they were looking into it but weren't sure the of the business case.

I don’t know anything about buying servers, is that expensive?

It depends on how many servers you put in a rack. It's been years now I did this kind of work but I would say that an average rack with 20-25U in computing, 5-10 in storage and 5 in networking will cost you 300k$ easily. I'm pretty sure that Oxide will be more an Apple-esque experience, also on the price side, so a "normal" rack giving the same performances will be cheaper but if you want Oxide you are looking for other features beside the pure HW.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#184

Post by dewey »

keepamovin wrote: post #145
dewey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get. I always find that a very naive point of view, of course I would want to earn a US tech salary while living somewhere in the country side, who wouldn't. But I'm also aware that this is not how t…

Is that why you went to Berlin? How does Berlin compare to SV for cost of living?

This site is usually helpful: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Re: The Cloud Computer

#185

Post by spamizbad »

steve1977 wrote: post #48
nithril wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is on-prem, calling it "cloud" computer is imho misleading / marketing term.

Absolutely. The point of cloud computing is that I don't have to care where something is running and that I (theoretically) have infinite elasticity and can scale in and out as fast and much as I need to. None of that applies here.

How much you care depends on your role.

As an engineer, an Oxide system works like any other cloud provider. You’re just interacting with its API and tooling like you would with Google Cloud or AWS.

To someone on the IT/Operations side, obviously there are differences but theres SIGNIFICANTLY less labor required to build-out and operate an Oxide system vs a rack full of servers. The biggest difference for these people is that there’s actual hardware vs a Cloud Provider, but also costs are fixed so there’s likely no monthly or quarterly meetings with finance arguing over the cloud bill, tying people up to try and shave a few thousand off the bill every month.

In finance/accounting, Oxide is probably the most different: now compute is CapEx rather than OpEx. Depending on your company’s stage that can be a wonderful thing for the bean counters.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#186

Post by steve1977 »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #162
steve1977 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have server under maintenance with Dell or HP, they would replace the server or component for me in such a case. Which would probably be a lot faster than trying to find someone who could maintain some non-standard firmware (as good as it might be). Even if I had to replace the server on my own cost it would probably still be cheaper. And it would be easy to replace because it's commodity hardware, that was kind…

I have had experiences with tens of Dell servers with the same model NIC having the same fault. The servers were absolutely under maintenance. I fought with tech support for weeks before I was finally told it was a driver/firmware issue and that I had to work around it (and lose performance for the sake of reliability). Maybe if I had hundreds of servers Dell would have helped me out. At the scale of tens they told m…

Not saying things like that don’t happen.

But how much effort (or money) do you think it would have taken to fix this issue if the NIC firmware was open source?

And with standard hardware, depending on the model, you might have had the option to add dedicated PCIe NICs for example. Not great, but at least something. Now try that with something proprietary (as in non-standard) like this Oxide system.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#187

Post by ls65536 »

As it appears Intel Capital is one of their Series A investors, I wonder if this has some bearing on the chances that there could also be an Intel CPU-based Oxide rack (or maybe individual sleds?) in the future.

It seems that Oxide's product is rather tied to AMD's CPU offerings for the time being (which perhaps will serve them very well for now), and given what they've accomplished so far, I imagine it would take quite a bit of effort on the platform initialization side (and other lower level stuff) to get things working with Intel CPUs instead. Surely the ability to have vendor diversity for many of their components should be an advantage for Oxide (and their customers downstream as well), so maybe there's something to think about there. Of course, this is all interesting only once Intel actually gets competitive again on the datacenter CPU side of things, where they seem to have really dropped the ball in recent years.

On the other hand, their networking switch hardware uses Intel components (Tofino), so maybe that'll be the extent of Intel's integration in their rack for the foreseeable future?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#188

Post by throw0101c »

mathverse wrote: post #163

This is too startup-y and niche and too small to attract enough companies on the market. Best case this gets acquired by HP,IBM or Dell and will die out because talent will leave. I know a 4bn/y revenue company that could greatly benefit from this but they will never even consider buying from a company like this.

> This is too startup-y and niche and too small to attract enough companies on the market.

From their press release:

> Oxide customers include the Idaho National Laboratory as well as a global financial services organization. Additional installments at Fortune 1000 enterprises will be completed in the coming months.

* https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2023-10-26/oxide-un...

From an interview:

> And what was the reaction of lucky rack customer #1? “I think it’s fair to say that the customer has appreciated the transformationally different (and exponentially faster!) process of going from new rack to provisioned VMs.”

> The same day Cantrill appeared as a guest on the Software Engineering Daily podcast.[1] (“The crate, by the way? Its own engineering marvel! Because to ship a rack with the sleds, it’s been a huge amount of work from a huge number of folks…”) Cantrill wouldn’t identify the customer but said that “Fortunately when you solve a hard problem like this and you really broadcast that you intend to solve it… Customers present themselves and say, ‘Hey, we’ve been looking for — thank God someone is finally solving this problem’.”

* https://thenewstack.io/in-pursuit-of-a-superior-server-oxide...

Niches can be profitable. Not every company has to be "web scale".

> I know a 4bn/y revenue company that could greatly benefit from this but they will never even consider buying from a company like this.

What does "like this" mean? Small? Every company starts out that way.

I think its cool that someone is trying to do startup hardware things, as in recent years it seems like its mostly software. I don't a use for the product in my area of IT, but I wish them luck.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#190

Post by osti »

They use Tofino as the networking switch. But Intel is discontinuing Tofino so I'm wondering what does future upgrade path look like for Oxide? Would they consider something like a p4 programmable DPU as the replacement?
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