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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#391

Post by dewbrite »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #350
bigironcto wrote: post #241

I am CTO of a large global data center provider posting with throwaway account. As a technologist, I really appreciate what they have done. Impressive work, high quality, however I don't understand who this is for. The meaningful market for Data Center hardware is pretty well defined in two clusters. People that build/make custom gear (such as Hyperscalers) and people that buys HP/Cisco/IBM/Dell... (blades or hyper-c…

You may not be aware of the pain that many large, non-software companies currently have on AWS. Gigantic monthly bills (hundreds of thousands per month) coming from subdivisions that aren't capable or motivated to reduce their AWS budget or usage. To the office of the CTO, Oxide's value proposition (buy instead of rent) could be very motivating. "Hey subdivision A, could we buy a few Oxide racks and move your workloa…

Having worked somewhere with an AWS spend of $30k/mo on _virtually nothing_, I can attest to this. I think most of it was sales demos that never got cleaned up.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#392

Post by skywhopper »

silverlake wrote: post #212
fefe23 wrote: post #11

This is actually a pretty big deal. They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration problem. They integrated it. It comes with all the features they expect you to want if you wanted to build your own cloud. Also, they wrote the software. And it's all open source. So no "sorry but the third party vendor droppe…

How is this different from AWS Outpost?

You own this. AWS Outpost is leased and you still also pay for the resource usage on top of the outpost unit itself. And this would not be integrated with your AWS account.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#393

Post by steveklabnik »

wkoszek wrote: post #192

I regret missing the Open Source Firmware Conference--I really wanted to meet them and learn some more on what's the story here. I know it's a brilliant team, and since ZFS/OpenSolaris/Dtrace I've known about Bryan. The product is a nicely looking product too. One thing I don't get is the target market. Who is it? Banks? Cloud vendors? Insurance companies? I think there's a part of the computer business that I don't…

> One thing I don't get is the target market. Who is it?

Fortune 1000, government. Large organizations that want to own their own hardware, yet want the cloud experience for deploying their software to it. First two customers to have received racks are Idaho National Lab, a Department of Energy laboratory, and a global finances firm. I think that gives a characterization to at least part of the market.

> They won't do this for me?

You are correct that they will do that for you. There are big differences though. From a hardware level, the largest one is that what you'll get in that case are individual 1U servers, in a rack, built from a bunch of reference designs, pieced together from various different organizations. We designed this as a whole rack. From scratch. This has a number of benefits, like for example, we use 80mm fans, at a very low RPM. Our fans draw less power and operate more quietly than the usual fans you'd get in that case. (I know you said people don't care about noise, and it's true that it's not a feature of the product to sell, just an interesting aspect of the design process: we didn't set out to make the rack quiet, it just is, thanks to other decisions that are more meaningful, like cooling efficiently) On the software side, we have written an enormous amount of software from scratch, designed for this specific hardware. Including a control plane, so you can think of the whole rack as a pool of resources, not as individual servers you manage yourself. And since we have done all of this in-house, we can take responsibility for the full quality of the product. If you have a firmware bug, it's not "oh sorry, we'll file a ticket with our firmware vendor and let you know when that's sorted," we will fix it ourselves. Everything is integrated and works together, because we built it for purpose that way, not because we installed a bunch of things from different organizations, ran some test, and said "looks good to me."

Re: The Cloud Computer

#394

Post by skywhopper »

la64710 wrote: post #279
fefe23 wrote: post #11

This is actually a pretty big deal. They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration problem. They integrated it. It comes with all the features they expect you to want if you wanted to build your own cloud. Also, they wrote the software. And it's all open source. So no "sorry but the third party vendor droppe…

On site backup inventory DC build out cost and effort Power cooling requirements Dark fiber bandwidth requirement New headcount to support all this No thanks , I have widgets to make and sell and a business to run.

Your business model is not the only one in existence.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#395

Post by osti »

flumpcakes wrote: post #201
osti wrote: post #190

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?

Oxide racks curren use AMD CPUs and and after buying Pensando AMD now offer P4 DPUs. I would hazard a complete guess and say maybe a move from Tofino to Pensando is on the cards for future networking revisions.

Company where I work at is evaluating Pensando DPUs and they are very powerful.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#396

Post by yardie »

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's very expensive hardware. I think they are trying to bring TCO down on the operation side with better control plane. I work in hyperconverged systems and it's a bunch of tradeoffs. Nothing I've configured has approached $500k so their control plane and OS has to make a really good show of why this 2x expensive cabinet is better than rack and stack Dell.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#397

Post by gleb »

steveklabnik wrote: post #343
gleb wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be dismissive of people telling you that the product description can be improved. My opinion is that the description of the product in this thread will outperform your site 10 to 1.

I am not trying to be dismissive, I was just explaining since there was some confusion.

I'll try to explain, not in the spirit of being argumentative, but with the hope of being useful.

The comment you replied to was not questioning the value of integrated cabling. It was pointing out that the product description on the site does not make sense.

"Cloud computer" sounds like a server you rent from AWS. It's kind of like calling Rust "cloud compiler."

If you choose to use words that your audience doesn't understand, or even worse understands to mean the opposite of what you want them to mean, it's a good idea to explain these words immediately using conventional words with conventional meaning. The comments by throw0101a did that.

The product seems really cool, but there is no way I would've understood what it was from the website.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#398

Post by doublepg23 »

throw0101c wrote: post #175
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'd like to add that their open source code is also EXTREMELY high quality. * https://github.com/oxidecomputer

MPL even, that should satisfy about anyone who'd want to contribute.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#399

Post by MichaelZuo »

steveklabnik wrote: post #341
MichaelZuo wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will you be selling services as well, such as taking care of installation, boot up, testing, validation, etc., for a fee?

At this stage of the company, everyone gets a white-glove installation process. I suspect that will change over time but I don't work on that part of things, so I don't personally know the details.

Thanks, are the specific details standardized and available in writing? Or is it more tailored to each customer?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#400

Post by teraflop »

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.

Yeah, I just skimmed through the reference docs for Hubris and was very impressed with what I saw. No "rocket science", just (apparently) solid technical decisions that are extremely well justified and documented.

https://oxidecomputer.github.io/hubris/reference/

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