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

91–100 of 994 posts

Re: The Cloud Computer

#91

Post by throw0101a »

dewey wrote: post #79
keepamovin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, man! That's the way it should be done. It's not a company's business to decide how much your life should cost. It's its business to reward you for the value you provide, and that value is not tethered to your location, so neither should be your salary!

This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get. I always find that a very naive point of view, of course I would want to earn a US tech salary while living somewhere in the country side, who wouldn't. But I'm also aware that this is not how t…

> This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get.

Well the co-founders live in the Silicon Valley area, with their physical HQ being in Emeryville:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeryville,_California

Re: The Cloud Computer

#92

Post by steve1977 »

nickik wrote: post #89
steve1977 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So similar to a IBM mainframe then?

Similar in some ways different in others. But in terms of not being a PC architecture. Yes it is. But in many other ways its not at all like a Mainframe.

I’m not sure if “not PC architecture” is really an advantage for many customers.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#93

Post by speed_spread »

steve1977 wrote: post #59
EvanAnderson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of. The big deal with Oxide is that all the legacy compatibility with the IBM PC platform is gone, and the whole stack, top-to-bottom, is built by then (including firmware). It's not like commodity x86 gear with black-box (often buggy) firmware and layer-upon-layer of hacks and compatibility kludges to present the hardware interface of a late model IBM PC AT.

What makes you think so? According to their website, the compute bit is based on AMD EPYC 7713P CPUs. I can buy these at my local electroncis retailer. So pretty much commodity x86.

The CPUs are x64 but the architecture is not that of a PC, there is no BIOS, etc. You couldn't boot Windows or Linux on the bare metal. The hardware, firmware and hypervisor are custom built for control, safety and observability. On top of that, the application OS all run on VMs which _do_ have a (virtual) PC architecture.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#94

Post by vidarh »

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.

Every "cloud" computer is on-prem for someone, and "private cloud" has been a term for at least a decade to refer to "API-based provisioning of resources like with a cloud but in your own data centre/office" that may not be "technically" a cloud but carries the meaning clearly for anyone in the business.

What they're selling is building blocks for private/hybrid/public clusters that may or may not fit your definition of cloud depending on where they happen to be located but where what the term signifies is that it is built to be a building block of a cloud setup that includes features above and beyond a "regular" server to provide what most people tend to associate with a cloud. That is, you're getting APIs to spawn virtualized compute and storage, rather than having to install a hypervisor and management APIs etc. and combine the resources into a cohesive whole yourself.

My guess is that most of them will end up being sold to either hosting providers to provide cloud services to their customers or companies large enough to operate their own data centres where the IT department will use them to offer cloud services to other parts of the business, where the term really is not misleading anyone.

It's too big even for most "private clouds" in smaller companies, because they tend to be too small to be able to order by the rack even when there are APIs etc. offered to developers to provision compute and storage (e.g. years ago I used to operate a hybrid cloud setup with a ~1000 or so VM instances across several countries, and while we had several racks worth of gear we physically owned in aggregate, we didn't have any full racks in any individual location).

Re: The Cloud Computer

#95

Post by steve1977 »

thom wrote: post #87
steve1977 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are building your own cloud infrastructure, you're not doing cloud computing. Unless you rent it out and are a cloud provider , but the website at least does not seem to target those.

There are many “you”s in most enterprises. If your platform engineering team builds their own cloud, and offers an experience similar to other cloud providers (or even better and more targeted), this could be a clear win.

You = the enterprise

The definition of cloud is “out there in the sky - not here”

Re: The Cloud Computer

#96

Post by throw0101a »

steve1977 wrote: post #48
nithril wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Define "I"?

I-as-developer can call an VMware/OpenStack API with an on-prem/private cloud and get a new instance just as easily as calling an AWS API. I-as-developer does not have to worry about elasticity if the IT hardware folks have the capacity.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#98

Post by steve1977 »

growse wrote: post #77
steve1977 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are building your own cloud infrastructure, you're not doing cloud computing. Unless you rent it out and are a cloud provider , but the website at least does not seem to target those.

Nonsense. The operative bit of "cloud" is "provision and de-provision instantly via an API, without much concern for what's going on inderneath", not "lives in someone else's datacenter".

It’s called cloud because it’s not in your own data center. Usually cloud symbols were used in network diagrams to depict systems/networks outside of our concern.

Also you could don’t really get elasticity with a system like this. If anything, that would be the operative bit for me.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#99

Post by dewey »

throw0101a wrote: post #91
dewey wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get. I always find that a very naive point of view, of course I would want to earn a US tech salary while living somewhere in the country side, who wouldn't. But I'm also aware that this is not how t…

> This really is one of these things where every employee in a cheap cost of living area will say "Exactly, man!" and people in an expensive area will see it differently because it might cap them lower than what they could get. Well the co-founders live in the Silicon Valley area, with their physical HQ being in Emeryville: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emeryville,_California

Early stage VC-backed startup compensation is very different from later stage companies or bootstrapped companies. It's very common for founders or early employees to receive a lower salary and receive equity instead.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#100

Post by vidarh »

steve1977 wrote: post #72
dist1ll wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This server is for cloud operators - i.e. for organizations that are building their own cloud infrastructure. That's why Oxide is drawing comparisons to hyperscalers.

If you are building your own cloud infrastructure, you're not doing cloud computing. Unless you rent it out and are a cloud provider , but the website at least does not seem to target those.

"Private cloud" has been a term for at least a decade to refer to situations where people are building their own cloud infrastructure to provide a "cloud feature set" even though the servers are self hosted.

You may not like it, but it's been a long time since "cloud" has exclusively referred to "someone in another organisation entirely runs the computers" as opposed to virtualised allocation of resources.

Post reply on HN