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

761–770 of 994 posts

Re: The Cloud Computer

#761

Post by lucideer »

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 obviously want your DCs as standardized as possible. Until this company has a certain/size and scale, no one serious will trust their black boxes at any type of scale.

This gets to the crux of my first thoughts when I read the marketing copy: can they deliver (reliability).

They do admit very clearly that what they're doing is hard and that at many points during development they were reluctant to be too ambitious (for obvious reasons), but at each stage they did just that: proceeded with the most ambitious option. That takes a huge amount of self belief that might be warranted or might be hubris. As you point out, untimely the success of Oxide won't only hinge on ability to deliver on that self belief, but more on their ability to convince prospective customers that they have competency to do what noone else can.

I fully support every part of their approach in theory but my wizened traveled self thinks it smells a little too good to be true.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#762

Post by christophilus »

mlindner wrote: post #700
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People might just look at it and say "It's just a rack of CPUs and storage." And I can only imagine just how much you might be tempted to throttle them Lol. Bro.

I'm not even the target market for this and I completely understand the feeling there. There's a lot of people who just have no conception of computing hardware anymore. People who are tied to AWS and have spent their entire careers working with AWS and now simply believe with a passion that "that's just how it is" as AWS continues to raise prices while their own cost of compute continues to get cheaper and cheaper.…

> CPUs … throttle

The guy’s “lol” was at the (possibly unintentional) joke.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#763

Post by tinco »

Always_Anon wrote: post #662
sgt wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems risky considering how small of a developer pool actively works on illumos/Solaris. The code is most definitely well engineered and correct, but there are huge teams all around the world deploying on huge pools of Linux compute that have contributed back to Linux.

They had a bug in the database they are using that was due to a Go system library not behaving correctly specifically on illumos. They've got enough engineering power to deal with such a thing but damn..

Re: The Cloud Computer

#764

Post by dilyevsky »

steveklabnik wrote: post #367
singhrac wrote: post #322

Will Oxide build a GPU rack as well? Asking for a friend.

We do not currently have plans for a GPU-focused product, but it is on our radar.

Hey Steve, what is Oxide solution for multi-rack deployments? If i need to build spine-leaf do i have to byo spine gear or is it taken care of?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#765

Post by astrea »

I think I'm missing something here. Do they sell servers or are they selling some interesting service where you can buy a server AND they physically host the machine in their own data centers? If the former, what value add do they provide over IBM/SuperMicro/[INSERT COMPUTER COMPANY HERE]? The custom OS? You could get 99% of the way there with bare-metal Kubernetes.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#766

Post by mbakke »

Always_Anon wrote: post #662
sgt wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems risky considering how small of a developer pool actively works on illumos/Solaris. The code is most definitely well engineered and correct, but there are huge teams all around the world deploying on huge pools of Linux compute that have contributed back to Linux.

If everyone had this mindset we would be running our workloads on Microsoft Windows by now.

GNU/Linux was also "risky" at some point.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#767

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

addisonj wrote: post #455

I have been following oxide for a bit, and really don't have to add to the tech conversation, but do want to say: Congrats to the team on reaching this big milestone and (in my eyes at least) just as much congratulations on doing it in a way that has been unique and sticking to values that seems to drive a strong positive culture (at least from the outside looking in). Shipping products is hard , and only getting har…

Yeah, I don't honestly know much about the hardware side of things, nor the business/economic rationale for why one would prefer an Oxide rack over a more conventional setup, but reading through their posts, what they've done is just singularly so impressive that I really, really, really want them to succeed.

I've worked in startups most of my life, but it's tough feeling like you've got to take a bunch of shortcuts ("MVP"-it before you run out of runway, etc. etc.), so to see a startup just put a ton of real engineering prowess into a great product is a sight to behold.

Also, while there are obviously amazing products out there in the world, it's so often a "race to the bottom" that it feels like decently made products are just prohibitively expensive. I'm really into antique espresso machines, and there is a reason that seeing rebuilds of beautiful old lever espresso machines get so many oohs and ahhs online - they truly don't make them like they used to, so it's so cool to see these beasts brought back to life. For some reason I have a similar feeling looking at these Oxide racks - they just didn't cut corners to build an awesome machine. Again, not qualified to say whether that makes economic sense long term, but it's still a thing of beauty regardless.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#768

Post by nonameiguess »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #104
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.

Have they basically done for the data centre what iMac did for computers in about year 1999 (or whenever!)

Brutal downvotes. I guess people forget the old Jeff Goldblum commercials? "There is no step 3."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PzvWgu6c

Re: The Cloud Computer

#769

Post by yencabulator »

mbakke wrote: post #766
Always_Anon wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems risky considering how small of a developer pool actively works on illumos/Solaris. The code is most definitely well engineered and correct, but there are huge teams all around the world deploying on huge pools of Linux compute that have contributed back to Linux.

If everyone had this mindset we would be running our workloads on Microsoft Windows by now. GNU/Linux was also "risky" at some point.

Linux grew up in the bedrooms of teenagers. It was risky in the era of 486 and Pentiums. The environment and business criticality of a $1-2M rack-size computer is quite different.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#770

Post by rtpg »

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.

IIJ has a project like this, data center in a container, just add power. They build it all up in Japan, ship it to rural areas across the world to basically jumpstart a local data center (I imagine mostly for industrial sites). They had a fun project where they had a half rack, powered by solar and connected to the net via Starlink.
Post reply on HN