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Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

oxide.computer

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Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#81

Post by mmphosis »

hlandau wrote: post #22

"Attests the software version is the version that is valid and shipped by the Oxide Computer Company" So in other words these servers will implement restrictive code signing practices and will be vendor-controlled, not owner-controlled? This is not my idea of "secure", and really in the wake of things like the Solarwinds or RSA hacks it shouldn't be anyone's idea of secure. Vendor-holds-the-keys is not an acceptable…

Open source firmware, vs "Open Firmware". The oxide.computer web page mentions open source firmware.

Secure boot chain

Our boot flow is secure by default. Our firmware is open source and attestable.

There is a link to "Explore Repos." Is coreboot the open source firmware?

https://github.com/oxidecomputer/coreboot

Open Firmware is different than coreboot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Firmware

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#82

Post by fuzzylightbulb »

alberth wrote: post #40

Who is the target buyer? Is this to compete against Nutanix / VCE?

I think it would more play in the space of a NetApp/Cisco FlexPod or VCE's Vblock, but what those customers are really purchasing is the certified validation of core enterprise apps on a particular hardware/software stack, as well as the massive engineering and support organizations that those companies can bring to bear to validate firmware upgrade and to swoop in in the event of an issue. You also seem to get a LOT more flexibility.

I am not a hater in the least but I really am failing to understand what is unique about this offering. It seems like you have no options regarding the internals, and so scaling compute separately from storage doesn't seem possible. I also am very suspect about offerings like this that have not yet released a second version of their key parts. Everyone says that they are going to be backwards compatible, but then the reality of managing heterogenous generations of gear in a homogenous fashion strikes and you get weird behavior all around.

Long story short, I would love to know what a customer of this scale of physical infrastructure is getting with Oxide that they would not be better served by going to one of the major vendors.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#84

Post by e12e »

wmf wrote: post #33
rbanffy wrote: post #30

Looks interesting. I wonder if the high integration makes it behave as a single-image machine with that many cores.

No, single system image is really expensive (see Superdome Flex) and most workloads can't justify that cost.

Aftermarket oxide rack running DragonFlyBSD, anyone ? ;)

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#86

Post by e12e »

wmf wrote: post #67
zozbot234 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could one reimplement SSI at the OS layer, similar to existing distributed OS's? Distributed shared memory is usually dismissed because of the overhead involved in typical scenarios, but this kind of hardware platform might make it feasible.

There was Mosix at the OS layer in the 1990s and Virtual Iron at the hypervisor layer in the aughts. I think the cost and performance of software SSI just doesn't intersect with demand anywhere.

Plan9 on an oxide rack might get you close to an SSI work-a-like - but I think it's unlikely it'd be a practical use of the hw?

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#89

Post by tyingq »

Sanguinaire wrote: post #80

Looks fantastic, and the hardware specs appeal to me greatly - but I'm not sure there is an actual market outside the "cult of personality" bubble. A few SV wannabes will buy into this to trade off a Twitter relationship with the Oxide founders - but does anyone really see the IT teams at Daimler, Proctor & Gamble, Morgan Stanley... et al - actually going for this over HPE/Dell and AWS/Azure? We are a long way away f…

You wouldn't have to pitch it initially as a replacement for your on-prem HPE/Dell. It could be pitched as a replacement for the hosted private cloud you have from IBM, Oracle, etc, that you're unhappy with.

Re: Servers as they should be – shipping early 2022

#90

Post by ksec »

May be instead of asking target market or audience, who are their competitors?

(Edit: Previous Discussions https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21682360 )

Also thinking if the Website is not finished? All the "Read More" actually hide very little information, if so why hide it? And doesn't seems to explain the company very well. Seems like we need to listen to their PodCast to find out what is going on. ( Edit: Found a Youtube Video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvZA9n3e5pc )

>Get the most efficient power rating and network speeds of 100GBps without the pain of cable

100GBps would be impressive, 100Gbps would be ... not much?

A interesting thing is all the terminal like graphics are actually HTML/CSS and not images.

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