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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#351

Post by vineyardlabs »

repelsteeltje wrote: post #135
jjice wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they currently run a podcast weekly called "Oxide and Friends" where they talk about miscellaneous things in the software space. The most recent few episodes have been about corporate open source and they've had excellent guests, like Kelsey Hightower. Definitely the best computer related podcasts out there. Bryan and Adam are great hosts and their humor is always a delight.

+1 Agree Other podcasts I'd recommend: ADSP [1] (if you're into programming), 2.5 admins [2] (if you're into computers). But I have no recommendations about hardware design because AFAIK the podcasts you mention and what Oxide is doing are pretty unique. [1] Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs https://adspthepodcast.com/ [2] Allan Jude, Jim Salter, Joe Ressington https://2.5admins.com/

The Amp Hour is really the only popular hardware/electronics design podcast as far as I can tell, and it's pretty decent, especially when they have interesting guests.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#353

Post by paryhin »

aabhay wrote: post #165
weystrom wrote: post #16

> Everyone at Oxide makes $201,227 USD, regardless of location. Man I would love to work for a company like that. I don't know why more people don't set their startups like that.

Works until you have to hire a designer

We've got designers, me included, and a few others on the team who aren't engineers. I also hail from what people like to call a "third-world country". So far it's working great, and we're hiring more folks from all over the world, not just the USA.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#354

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

cstross wrote: post #140
cpursley wrote: post #3

Can somebody explain in a sentence or two what this actually is and what the benefits are?

They've reinvented the IBM Mainframe. Big rack-sized box with lots of redundant hardware that serves guest VMs. This is basically a zSeries in drag. The key difference is the price structure -- IBM leases the hardware wherever they can get away with it, and uses a license manager to control how many of the machine's resources you can access (based on how much you can bear to pay). This, however, is like a mainframe y…

This is exactly what it is, plus custom "cloud" software

Re: The Cloud Computer

#355

Post by throw0101c »

JeremyNT wrote: post #222
ollybee wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Existing vendors will provide rack integration services and deliver a turn key solution like this. Also vendors of virtualization management software have partnerships with hardware suppliers and be happy to deliver fully integrated solutions if you're buying by the rack. The difference is in those cases you have flexibility in the design which seems to be missing here. Proxmox and a full rack of Supermicro gear woul…

> Proxmox and a full rack of Supermicro gear would not be as sophisticated, but end result is pretty much the same, with I imagine far far better bang for buck. I think the question is how well they can do the management plane. Dealing with the "quirks" of a bunch of grey box supermicro stuff is always painful in one way or another. The drop shipped, pre-cabled cab setups are definitely nice but that's only a part of…

> I think the question is how well they can do the management plane.

Docs:

* https://docs.oxide.computer/api/guides/responses

See perhaps "This repo houses the work-in-progress Oxide Rack control plane."

* https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron

Re: The Cloud Computer

#356

Post by Aeolun »

scott00 wrote: post #132
Aeolun wrote: post #32

But there's no pricing! How will I know if this could potentially save me money compared to AWS if I cannot make a sensible comparison until I contact sales (or probably after I contact sales).

If you are genuinely in the market for multiple racks of servers you (a) know how much a rack of hp/dell gear costs, which gets you within an order of magnitude of what this is going to cost, and (b) would not buy one of these without a sales call even if you could.

I wouldn’t buy these without a sales call, but costing it out to less than an order of magnitude would make it a lot easier to determine economic viability.

I just hate calling people to determine if we’re going to match, when they could have given me that information up front.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#357

Post by steveklabnik »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #311

Oh. I get what this is. It's a "cloud" mainframe. They're trying to be the Apple of mainframes. Reinvent OpenStack, slap it on some 8Us and storage arrays, shove it in a rack, and ship it to a colo with a professional installer. So basically one of the larger server vendors but with integrated "cloud" software, minus the 2-hour service turnaround and spare parts. The fact that they're writing the software from scratc…

> slap it on some 8Us and storage arrays,

This does not accurately represent the amount of hardware design we have done, let alone the software work.

> The fact that they're writing the software from scratch is going to add years of lead time

What lead time are you referring to?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#358

Post by danbruc »

TrueDuality wrote: post #85

I'd like to add that their open source code is also EXTREMELY high quality. If you're an embedded developer go take a look at Hubris and Humility. I ended up using those to GREAT effect for this custom one-off aerospace device and it was a fantastic experience to integrate with. Definitely a change from what I was used to that took a bit of getting used to.

Tangent. In my admittedly limited experience, embedded code seems to have a tendency to be some of the worst code you can come across. The stuff is already low level and not the most easy to follow, but then embedded developers seem to despise names with more than two letters and a number. Without the datasheet at hand it is impossible to figure out what any of the code does because everything is just an abbreviation or acronym from some block or pin-out diagram.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#359

Post by jeffrallen »

csomar wrote: post #271
TrueDuality wrote: post #85

I'd like to add that their open source code is also EXTREMELY high quality. If you're an embedded developer go take a look at Hubris and Humility. I ended up using those to GREAT effect for this custom one-off aerospace device and it was a fantastic experience to integrate with. Definitely a change from what I was used to that took a bit of getting used to.

I agree. I stole some of their stuff from here https://github.com/oxidecomputer/third-party-api-clients/tre... when I needed a SendGrid integration. High quality code and proper use of Rust types.

Their ring logger was really enlightening to me about the value of Rust enums. Heterogeneous log events are dropped into the ring with some holding only the fact that something happened, and others holding additional data about what happened. Then Humility is able to print out the contents of the ring either online or in crash dumps. This is how you get logging in nostdlib Rust without ending up without half of a badly implemented printf. Instead, Humility, which has the full stdlib available, formats the enums for the firmware.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#360

Post by steveklabnik »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #195
rob74 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but... what is a "Cloud Computer"? Is it a "computer in the cloud", like e.g. an AWS EC2 instance? Or is it a fancy name for a good old fashioned server rack (on which you will probably want to run your own cloud, because everybody's doing that nowadays, hence the name), like in this case? And if it's a server rack, how come you don't need any cables? And what do you do with this "cloud computer"? Do they host i…

> like e.g. an AWS EC2 instance? Or is it a fancy name for a good old fashioned server rack I mean, the former is just the latter with some of the setup done for you no? Anyways, it’s a full server rack, with tightly vertically integrated hardware and software. Not sure if you’ve poked around the rest of their site, but it seems like their whole software stack is designed with some really nice usability and integrati…

> there’s a little half-snippet there suggesting that provisioning bare-metal VM’s out of the underlying hardware could as trivial as provisioning an EC2 with Terraform,

We have a terraform provider, yes https://github.com/oxidecomputer/terraform-provider-oxide

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