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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#641

Post by jjav »

Always_Anon wrote: post #590
jjav wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, you can buy your own hardware and set it up with OpenStack and use it as a private cloud. Companies like Canonical or Redhat make a lot of money by providing software (mostly open source) to support exactly that use case. Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? If you haven't lived through this, the answer is: nob…

>Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. With Oxide you're locked into what looks like a Solaris derivative OS running on the metal and you're only allowed to provision VMs which is a huge disadvantage. I run a fleet of over 30,000 nodes in th…

> Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues.

I've been a Dell customer at a previous company. I know for a fact that's not true.

I had a support ticket for a weird firmware bug open for two years, they could never figure it out. I left that job but for all I know the case is still open many years later.

Dell doesn't know how to fix things like that because they don't design and engineer the systems they sell. Dell is a reseller who puts components together from a bunch of vendors and it mostly works but when it doesn't, there's nobody on staff who can fix it.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#642

Post by yencabulator »

jjav wrote: post #631
yencabulator wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Skill-wise, yes for sure (except perhaps for storage -- I haven't heard them talk about that much). Bandwidth wise, though?

I used to work for a company targeting Fortune 500s. At that level of spend, when a client had a problem, somebody got on a plane. Only a fraction of those problems escalated all the way to R&D, which is where Oxide skills are. That's where VMWare etc are hard to beat.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#643

Post by sgt »

tinco wrote: post #577
yencabulator wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you're deploying VMs, which is the use case here, the substrate OS becomes significantly less important. Those VMs will mostly just be linux. Now you need to know both the OS they chose and the OS you chose... (No, I don't believe it'll be 100% hands-off for the host. This is an early stage product, with a lot of custom parts, their own distributed block storage, hypervisor, and so on.)

This true for other hypervisors too. Enterprises are still paying hundreds of millions to VMware, who knows what's going on in there? I wouldn't have picked Opensolaris, but it's a lot better than other vendors that are either fully closed source, or thin proprietary wrappers over Linux with spotty coverage and you're not allowed to touch the underlying OS for risk of disrupting the managed product.

What's more important is that the team actually knows Illumos/Solaris inside out. You can work wonders with a less than ideal system. That said, Illumos is of high quality in my opinion.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#644

Post by cozzyd »

rwmj wrote: post #290
paxys wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their pricing starts at $500K (but realistically will be $1-2M per order at a minimum). This is not intended for people who browse their website, click "buy" and fill in their credit card info. If you don't want to talk to a sales rep you were never their target customer, and I'm sure they aren't sweating the hypothetical lost sale.

I still don't get why they can't put a price on the website.

Presumably everybody's quote is going to be a bit different depending on various factors...

Re: The Cloud Computer

#645

Post by Always_Anon »

wmf wrote: post #640
Always_Anon wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>I'm not speaking hypothetically.

Neither am I.

>If you hit a "zero-day" bug that Dell has never seen it's going to take time.

If you hit a "zero-day" bug that Oxide has never seen it's going to take time.

>And somehow every large customer finds bugs that Dell certification didn't.

Yes, happens. And I'm sure the exact same will happen with Oxide, so it's not a differentiator.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#646

Post by Always_Anon »

jjav wrote: post #637
Always_Anon wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).

Oxide also has various hardware components from AMD, Intel, Samsung, etc. They are not manufacturing every component.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#647

Post by leetrout »

endisneigh wrote: post #638
strgcmc wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> iPhones do have the pedigree

Not in 2007-2008 which is equivalent to Oxide today.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#648

Post by jjav »

yencabulator wrote: post #557
jjav wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Apple supports OSX for consumers, they don't exactly surface the fact that there's BSD semi-hidden in there somewhere. That's because they own the whole stack, from CPU to GUI and support it as a unit. That's the benefit of having a product where a single owner builds and supports it as a whole. My impression of Oxide is that that's the level of single source of truth they are bringing to enterprise in-house clo…

Apple is a horrible example, with Apple when you have a problem, you often end up with an unfixable issue that Apple won't even acknowledge. You definitely don't want to taint Oxide's reputation with that association. As for why I think Helios will become customer facing: Oxide is a small startup. They have limited resources. Their computers expensive enough to be very much business critical. You'll get some support…

> Apple is a horrible example,

Apple is a great example of the benefits of an integrated system where the hardware and software are designed together. There are tons of benefits to that.

What makes Apple evil (IMO, many people disagree) is how everything is secret and proprietary and welded shut. But that doesn't take away from the benefits of an integrated hardware/software ecosystem.

Oxide is open source so it doesn't suffer from the evil aspect but benefits from the goodness of engineered integration. Or so I hope.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#649

Post by INTPenis »

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…

To be completely honest, this is for the idealists out there. Those of us who are itching to replace our vSphere with oVirt because 1) we have the time and skill to do it, 2) we believe in open source and 3) we believe we can make huge savings by using open source.

I expect the oxide supporters to have a hard few years ahead of them of finding bugs in high throughput environments. But at the end of the day it will be worth it just to have another competitor in a pretty boring playing field.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#650

Post by willglynn »

electroly wrote: post #454
skywhopper wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's mostly not true that you still pay for resource usage on top of the Outpost unit. That's only true, AFAIK, for EBS local snapshots and Route 53 Resolver endpoints. The big boys--EC2 instances, S3 storage, and EBS volumes--are all "free" on Outposts. That is, included in the cost of the unit and not double-charged. Charging for EBS local snapshots on your own Outpost S3 storage and Route 53 Resolvers on your own…

AWS Outposts are leased:

> You can purchase Outposts servers capacity for a three-year term and choose between three payment options: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. … At the end of your Outposts servers term, you can either renew your subscription and keep your Outposts server(s), or return your Outposts server(s). If you do not notify AWS of your selection before the end of your term, your Outposts server(s) will be renewed on a monthly basis, at the rate of the No Upfront payment option corresponding to your Outposts server configuration.

https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/pricing/

> You can purchase Outposts rack capacity for a 3-year term … either renew your subscription and keep your existing Outposts rack(s), or return your Outposts rack(s)

https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/

There is no permanent purchase option.

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