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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#931

Post by sanderjd »

steve1977 wrote: post #74
throw0101a wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With rack- and multi-rack-level management of all your hardware infrastructure (including networking and storage, along with VMs) using an API: * https://docs.oxide.computer/api/guides/responses

Yeah including networking and storage together with virtualization is what makes hyperconverged infrastructure hyperconverged. Otherwise it's usually just called converged infrastructure. It's nice, it's just nothing new.

It's not a new concept, it's a new product. Ideas do not become uninteresting the moment the first person instantiates the idea. Further iterations on a possibly-good idea are also interesting.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#932

Post by sanderjd »

sbarre wrote: post #523
Voultapher wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, you mention Hyper-converged, can you point to anything that comes even close to the experience you presumably get from the Oxide offering.

Part of the problem here is that the people who make the purchasing decisions (like this CTO guy) don't care about "the experience" because they're not the ones unpacking boxes and plugging in cables. They pay other people to do that and they don't really care if it's a miserable time. And if it takes days instead of hours, who cares? Rarely is someone setting up a data center under the gun (unless you're Elmo and we…

Yeah I think this is the interesting question. My (naive, uninformed) interpretation is that Oxide is betting that there is some area in the overlap of the venn diagram between "people who have reasons not to run their businesses on the public clouds" and "people who are not suits but technologists and care about the user experience of setting up and maintaining their infrastructure because they want to do it themselves / without hiring lots of people and service contracts".

I'm not sure how big that space is, or whether it is likely to grow or shrink over time, but I'm intrigued by the proposition they're testing here!

Re: The Cloud Computer

#933

Post by sanderjd »

hollerith wrote: post #908
Voultapher wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, you mention Hyper-converged, can you point to anything that comes even close to the experience you presumably get from the Oxide offering.

Although it might be true that the existing vendors don't provide a good experience, I'm still a little miffed that the OP does not even mention the existence of the existing vendors.

This I don't get. It's marketing copy, from a small upstart. They don't need to link to their established competitors...

Re: The Cloud Computer

#934

Post by sanderjd »

bigironcto wrote: post #258
apendleton wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're mostly targeting customers who want an AWS- or GCP-like experience from a developer perspective (compute is abstracted and you can provision it with an API, etc.), but want to own their own compute infrastructure and have it on-prem. That market has mostly had to cobble together consumer-inspired HP/Cisco/whatever stuff historically (like, one of the early talks about the Oxide value proposition was c…

Thank you for the response. The problem you described has been solved by the large vendors with Hyper-converged offerings for many years so it sounds like Oxide might be a bit late to the party. I do understand well the rational of running your own servers vs hyperscalers, as well as the repatriation trend but I see Oxide at best as a niche player.

I mean, I don't know anything about this space like you do, I'm just an intrigued observer, but my impression is just: They are going to try to compete with those large vendors. Maybe they won't be able to! Such is life, and indeed is the most common outcome for new ventures.

But precious few new ventures have ever entered a market where nobody said some form of "I don't get it, there are already established products in this space, how will this new thing ever get traction?". And yet, lots of new ventures turn out to be competitive with the established players in their market, for one reason and another.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#935

Post by jeffrallen »

eduction wrote: post #905
jeffrallen wrote: post #891

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you imagine trying to investigate Bryan for a security clearance? "Sir, if you have nothing to hide, why do you talk so fast, and pronounce words like a foreigner who learned English from a book?" :) We love you Bryan, never change.

Oh to be a fly on the wall for the first Oxide Oracle partnership discussion…

Bryan: "Steve, I think you should take this meeting with Larry..."

Re: The Cloud Computer

#936

Post by sanderjd »

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.

> Framework is niche.

"Niche" is not a dirty word. Framework is niche, but if they can make their cost structure work (which I have no idea whether or not they can), that's ok. New products don't need to dominate their market in order to be succesful.

(But I do agree that Google Fiber is a bad example / a good example of a new product in an established market not working.)

Re: The Cloud Computer

#937

Post by sanderjd »

latchkey wrote: post #912
ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #866

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are ignoring the software stack, which is where a huge portion of the value-add is found.

I'm not ignoring the software stack, I just don't see any value in the additional vendor lock in on it. I'd rather use open source stuff developed by a large community of people and not a single small vendor tied to a very specific and limited hardware stack.

I don't think they're planning on forcing you to buy their products :)

As far as I can tell, there exists no "open source stuff developed by a large community of people" to run integrated server rack hardware. But if you're using such a thing, then I'd like to know what it is!

Re: The Cloud Computer

#938

Post by sanderjd »

latchkey wrote: post #620
cryptonector wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If their SW and FW source code is MPL 2.0, that's good enough to limit the extent of vendor lock-in. Sure, it would take time to take over maintenance of that code and then add support for different HW and so on, but there can be a cottage industry of consultancies that can help if ever Oxide vendor lock-in or bankruptcy becomes a problem.

No it isn't good enough. This is a hardware play because you could theoretically take that software and run it on whatever hardware you want. You're not going with this business because of their open source software though, you're going with it because they are making innovative hardware. If you're buying millions of this stuff, what says that you're going to get support for it in 5 years. Who knows... maybe Cisco wa…

Their hardware isn't really innovative though... Even the hardware integration isn't really innovative, as others here have pointed out.

My two cents is that this isn't really an innovation business model, it's an execution business model. Their proposition seems to be that they can execute a a server rack with integrated hardware and open-source software so well that customers will love their product.

Maybe they'll just end up with tons of nerds our there thinking, "I really wish I could justify investing in Oxide racks, but it just doesn't make sense for my business / I just can't sell it to my CIO", but hey, maybe not!

Re: The Cloud Computer

#939

Post by sanderjd »

fuzzylightbulb wrote: post #771
SamuelAdams wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How big is the market of sufficiently-vendor-lock-in-averse customers? Very. Just look at the USA defense spending budget. If you’ve ever worked on AWS-govcloud or secret, you know there’s a market here. This has huge use for military too. Imagine having a black site or off-grid location but still needing a rack of things. What if you could spin up an entire enterprise infrastructure by just loading up this rack? I…

> What if you could spin up an entire enterprise infrastructure by just loading up this rack? This is already being done quite successfully with existing offerings. Flexpod, VxRack, Nutanix, there are a ton of options.

And now there's another competitor with a different take on it!

"Other products already exist" is never a strong counterargument to the existence of new products.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#940

Post by steveklabnik »

acyou wrote: post #921
steveklabnik wrote: post #803

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Not yet, we’ll see what the future holds 2. Eventually, right now we are just starting, so working closely with customers and in small quantities, but eventually that is the idea. 3. No. We are already doing very well with fans, the design means a very tiny power draw. The racks are quite quiet. 4. No. 5. Selling hardware and running a private cloud are two different businesses. The public clouds don’t also sell s…

Thanks for the answers. Some followups: 1. Seems like you would need quite a bit of capital to be one of these integrator companies, to float the cash to buy land, build a facility and buy the racks. Does your own vs rent philosophy extend so far to also say that companies should also own the land and facility on and in which a server rack sits? Early on, Amazon talked about purpose-built datacenters being important,…

For 1 and 2, to be honest, I don't personally know much about all of that. I'm just an engineer :) I think there's a whole lot of "it depends."

3. Software engineer, not hardware, haha. I don't know if people have tried liquid cooled racks, personally.

5. "What prevents your competitors from also selling servers?" I mean, like I said, they're just totally different businesses. Doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it feels like there’s not a ton you’d be sharing there, other than one half knowing where they’d be getting some supply from.

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