The Cloud Computer • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cloud Computer

#41

Post by steve1977 » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

throw0101a wrote: post #27

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…

> They sell servers, but as a finished product. They sell rack-as-compute.[0] Their minimum order is one rack: You plug in power and network, connect to the built-in management software (API), and start spinning up VMs. [0] With built-in networking and storage.

So just hyperconverged infrastructure with a cute name?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#42

Post by pmontra » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:39 AM UTC

cpursley wrote: post #3

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

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 pictures of boards but no picture of the product as a whole.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#43

Post by albert_e » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:40 AM UTC

Is the name of the company "Oxide" or "0xide" (with a leading zero)?

All text seems to indicate the former while the logo seems to spell the latter?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#44

Post by axelthegerman » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:40 AM UTC

> The computer that runs the cloud should be able to be purchased and not merely rented.

This 100%!

Not everything needs to be a subscription. Sure there are running costs for operating that cloud computer as well as ongoing software development costs. But having photo albums in the cloud shouldn't cost me $30/month just because of storage - let me buy that hard drive (and maybe compute why not) and pay $10/y for operational costs

Re: The Cloud Computer

#45

Post by rhinoceraptor » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:40 AM UTC

tibbydudeza wrote: post #26

Reminds of what they worked on before at Sun ZFS storage appliance. Can it run Linux or Windows Data Center as ex-Sun folk they seem to have loved the last open source release before Oracle but now is still community developed variant of SunOS ???.

The hypervisor OS is based on Illumos, which was forked from OpenSolaris, and it uses Bhyve from FreeBSD for virtualization.

I would imagine the system architecture is different enough that running Linux as the base OS would take some work, for example it doesn't have an AMIBIOS.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#46

Post by depr » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

andrewstuart wrote: post #7

cpursley wrote: post #3

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

Weird there’s no mention of GPU at all when you’d think that’s what would prick up the ears of the hosting companies ….. stack a pile of GPUs in a rack, surely you can sell time on that. The Oxide machines seem to be aimed at 2020.

They want a lot of control over all the hardware in their servers. NVIDIA isn't interested in that, so they can't provide those types of servers.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#47

Post by DoingIsLearning » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

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).

Weird criticism, for anything involving CapEx it will always require an RFQ and quote.

You're not buying a bag of peanuts and they will likely price it differently if you're buying 1x or 500x.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#48

Post by steve1977 » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

nithril wrote: post #21

junon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears to be an all in one, preconfigured/partially-or-completely assembled rack server for on-prem hosting, complete with pre-configured software. Just my perception given the front page. I agree it's a bit vague.

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.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#49

Post by deadfece » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:41 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #2

Is this a big deal? I clicked on this skeptically, but...it actually seems like kind of a big deal? It is at least technically impressive, since it seems like they're eliminated a ton of datacenter pain points with the mechanical design.

It seems like they have managed to fit 32 1P servers in a 42U rack. That's pretty impressive, I have to admit. I don't think I've seen that level of density before.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#50

Post by dusted » Thu, Oct 26, 2023, 11:42 AM UTC

> core beliefs as a company:

> Cloud computing is the future of all computing infrastructure.

Oh god no!

Anywhere I can donate to have this not happen? I want my computing on premise, preferably under my table.

But well, if it _HAS_ to happen, 0xide is probably a lesser evil.