Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 994 posts

Re: The Cloud Computer

#631

Post by jjav »

yencabulator wrote: post #581
jjav wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oxide seems to have written their own ... > when any of that breaks, good luck! The premise is that you don't need luck, you can call Oxide. As you said, they wrote all of it, so they own all the interaction so they can diagnose all of it. When I call Dell with a problem between my OS filesystem and the bus and the hardware RAID, there's at least three vendors involved there so Dell doesn't actually employ anyone t…

That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key. The rest comes down to execution. Sure, we all have high hopes for Oxide. Sure, we all hate established players like Dell.

> That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key.

Just about any company will sell your company a support contract.

The more interesting question is, can they back it up with action when push comes to shove? I suspect most people have plenty of stories of opening support tickets with big name vendors that never get resolved. And through the grapevine you find out that they won't fix it because they can't fix it. They might not even have access to the source code or anyone on staff who has a clue about it because it came from who knows where. Sales is happy to sell you the support contract but it doesn't mean your problems can be fixed. BTDT.

From listening to the Oxide podcasts, my impression is that Oxide actually can technically fix anything in the stack they sell, which would make them vastly different from Dell et.al.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#632

Post by [deleted] »

cryptonector wrote: post #589
jjav wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Sun did that experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter

Yeah, I'm aware, but I didn't think they were serious about it.

[deleted]

Re: The Cloud Computer

#633

Post by wmf »

steve1977 wrote: post #52
throw0101a wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private cloud is a thing too: lots of folks run VMware, Hyper-V, or OpenStack in-house.

And it's as much of a misnomer there.

This has definitely been true, but what if Oxide is the first actual private cloud?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#634

Post by throw0101c »

cryptonector wrote: post #446
throw0101a wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Cooling, power supply, compute, storage, and network, all in a box. You supply power, a big network pipe, and the piping to external heat exchangers.

See §Examples:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modular_data_center

Also:

* https://www.deltapowersolutions.com/en/mcis/data-center-solu...

* https://atos.net/en/solutions/high-performance-computing-hpc...

* https://www.zelladc.com/zella-max

Search for "shipping container data centre" or "containerized datacenter".

Re: The Cloud Computer

#635

Post by [deleted] »

Always_Anon wrote: post #607
wmf wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it.

>And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. With Oxide, you'd be lucky to get same day service.

[deleted]

Re: The Cloud Computer

#636

Post by wg0 »

Aachen wrote: post #610
wg0 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume a million dollar. Ballpark.

I mean, the raw hardware surely costs around 100k, and no way that it costs more than ten million, so you're always going to be right with that "ballpark" qualification

I vaguely remember listening to their pod cast and my impression was that it starts around 500k.

Add few add ons, service contract, support etc so would be there.

I want such a rack but power draw on average is listed around 12kwh. Unbelievable.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#637

Post by jjav »

Always_Anon wrote: post #607
wmf wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it.

>And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. With Oxide, you'd be lucky to get same day service.

> Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours.

You're talking about replacement parts. Yes Dell is good about that.

The discussion above is asking them to diagnose and fix a problem with the interaction of various hardware components (all of which come from third parties).

Re: The Cloud Computer

#638

Post by endisneigh »

strgcmc wrote: post #325
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…

Essentially this same sentiment, applies to any number of things: - Why would anyone buy the Framework laptop, they don't have nearly the support/pedigree that Dell, HP, etc. has? - Why would anyone use iPhones in the enterprise/IT world, they don't have nearly the support/pedigree that Blackberry, Microsoft, etc. has? - Why would anyone use Google Fiber, they don't have nearly the network or support that AT&T, Spect…

Your examples are strange.

Framework is niche.

iPhones do have the pedigree.

Google Fiber is barely used.

Most folks do use a supported Linux distribution, they don’t roll their own.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#640

Post by wmf »

Always_Anon wrote: post #607
wmf wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it.

>And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. With Oxide, you'd be lucky to get same day service.

I'm not speaking hypothetically. If you hit a "zero-day" bug that Dell has never seen it's going to take time. And somehow every large customer finds bugs that Dell certification didn't.
Post reply on HN