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The Cloud Computer

oxide.computer

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Re: The Cloud Computer

#961

Post by 59nadir »

foobiekr wrote: post #922
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…

You are strongly misinterpreting both how real-world customers perceive vendor lock in and how DoD procurement works. Everything here is so far off from reality I don't even know where to begin.

Unfortunately your comment is of very limited value until you actually begin explaining.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#962

Post by moondev »

Since bhyve can't do nested virtualization, i guess they can't "dog food" the platform during development. I wonder if for that they use Linux.

The same hardware and software using kvm would be much more appealing. Not being able to run nested virt or GPUs on such a powerful and expensive rack is pretty brutal. Perhaps that is planned for the future though.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#963

Post by Always_Anon »

bobthecowboy wrote: post #832
Always_Anon wrote: post #809

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oxides biggest selling point is the API, which can be manipulated with Terraform. I see no SoftIron Terraform plugin.

We do have a Terraform plugin in active development. It's good enough that I use it every day, but in fairness it isn't released yet. Our API is also under active development, but it is open source today: https://github.com/SoftIron/hypercloud-api Go bindings included, other languages are under discussion.

Your webpage is an ocean of marketing fluff and buzzwords. It's not clear that you have a product that competes with Oxide. It's not even clear how you're different than Dell or HP.

Re: The Cloud Computer

#964

Post by bcantrill »

gary_0 wrote: post #959
bcantrill wrote: post #955

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The short answer is density. Smaller fans are exponentially less efficient (that is, dissipate exponentially more power for the same airflow) and datacenters -- (and racks within them) -- have a power budget. The traditional rack-and-stack approach is held captive by a geometry that really doesn't make sense (19" wide x 1RU/2RU); if power is spent on fans (and in a traditional cram-down rack, somewhere between 20-30%…

> 20-30% of power is spent on fans Wow. It makes sense if I think about it; heat is the primary byproduct and therefore a typical server rack is chock-full of chunks of spinning copper coils and plastic fins. But still... wow.

Even more galling about that 20-30%: it is really, really hard to measure. Believe it or not, you can't measure the draw even in fans in a traditional rack-and-stack server enclosure (that is, they are either not on their own voltage regulators or not regulators that have PMBus support, or the PMBus support is not plumbed through the BMC -- or all of these). And these aren't the only fans! In a traditional rack-and-stack, each server has AC power supplies -- and these supplies also have fans! These supplies are often entirely dark: they don't have PMBus support at all -- and definitely don't provide insight into how much power they are dissipating in their own fans. (Just empirically: if you don ear protection and walk up to your local 1RU/2RU server under load, those power supply fans will be cranking, and you will feel a hot, stiff breeze from just the power supplies alone!) This is where all of these effects start to reinforce one another: the per-server conversion is stupidly inefficient and the geometry is stupidly inefficient (power supplies are forced to have even smaller fans than the servers!) -- all of which results in more draw, none of which is observable.

The Oxide rack is really the opposite in all of these dimensions: we do our AC/DC conversion in a power shelf and run DC on a busbar; the geometry of the sleds allows for very efficient 80mm fans; and (importantly!) every regulator is observable through PMBus and plumbed through our service processor and management network -- so you can see where it all goes.

And if you think I'm worked up about this problem, you should talk to sufferers of at-scale rack-and-stack who have been burned by this. ;)

Re: The Cloud Computer

#965

Post by Fnoord »

bcantrill wrote: post #955
Fnoord wrote: post #894

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for power and therefore noise. Why though? I can see how it is interesting given energy crisis plus not going to squeeze out max W for performance at the cost of energy. If that is the reason, then it is going to be more cost efficient than competitors on the longer term, at the cost of perhaps requiring more hardware to possibly scale up.

The short answer is density. Smaller fans are exponentially less efficient (that is, dissipate exponentially more power for the same airflow) and datacenters -- (and racks within them) -- have a power budget. The traditional rack-and-stack approach is held captive by a geometry that really doesn't make sense (19" wide x 1RU/2RU); if power is spent on fans (and in a traditional cram-down rack, somewhere between 20-30%…

Thanks for the explanation.

Did you consider other or additional options such as using rest warmth of DC to provide heating for neighboring city, or Frore AirJet?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#966

Post by nickik »

nickik wrote: post #712
Animats wrote: post #706

"Everyone at Oxide makes $201,227 USD, regardless of location."[1] Do they actually assemble and build their own racks of hardware, or is that outsourced? Somewhere, there must be an assembly plant. If this stuff actually exists. It's hard to even find pictures of their products. Do they have production installations? [1] https://oxide.computer/careers

Manufacturing is done by Benchmark in Raleigh, NC. Its outsourced. First rack shipped to costumer Jul 1, 2023: https://twitter.com/oxidecomputer/status/1674901883130114048 Here is a picture an incomplete rack: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FfT7MHoUoAE90QZ?format=jpg&name=... You can find other pictures on twitter and other places.

Apparently I got something partly wrong: https://twitter.com/arjenroodselaar/status/17183502637346611...

Re: The Cloud Computer

#968

Post by gary_0 »

bcantrill wrote: post #964
gary_0 wrote: post #959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20-30% of power is spent on fans Wow. It makes sense if I think about it; heat is the primary byproduct and therefore a typical server rack is chock-full of chunks of spinning copper coils and plastic fins. But still... wow.

Even more galling about that 20-30%: it is really, really hard to measure. Believe it or not, you can't measure the draw even in fans in a traditional rack-and-stack server enclosure (that is, they are either not on their own voltage regulators or not regulators that have PMBus support, or the PMBus support is not plumbed through the BMC -- or all of these). And these aren't the only fans! In a traditional rack-and-s…

I worked on designing computerized machinery in the past, and having sensors for as much stuff as possible just seemed like a good idea. We had quite a few current sensors for various components. Then we could do stuff like log in to the unit remotely when a customer had an issue, and diagnose based on if something was using too much current or zero current, and that beats having to send out a technician to go poke and prod. There are a lot of uses for that kind of data. And you've got a CPU right there to send it to.

> These supplies are often entirely dark

Good grief. What happens if a fan dies? The whole rack mysteriously shuts down? Or does the power supply just turn into a Minecraft lava block?

Re: The Cloud Computer

#969

Post by jiggawatts »

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…

Having worked in a variety of related fields, my take on this is that hypervisors like VMware have largely eliminated the need for proprietary hardware with “support” contracts. Just buy 3x the capacity in white boxes and turn off anything that breaks.

The problem is that the industry hasn’t noticed this yet. The hyperscalers have, and are printing money as a consequence.

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