10 ms·

Congrats to the team, but after hearing about Oxide for literal years since the beginning of the company and repeatedly reading different iterations of their la

Congrats to the team, but after hearing about Oxide for literal years since the beginning of the company and repeatedly reading different iterations of their landing page, I still don't know what their product actually is. It's a hypervisor host? Maybe? So I can host VMs on it? And a network switch? So I can....switch stuff?

steveklabnik 3y ago
I wrote this a while back, does that help? Happy to elaborate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678324
- anaisbetts 3y ago
  Perfect - now get that 2nd paragraph on the landing page somehow!
- wcerfgba 3y ago
  I don't really understand how having a larger minimum purchase unit (entire rack vs rack unit) is a USP. Your comments explain the emphasis on tighter integration across the stack, but it doesn't clearly show why this is a benefit. What are the problems people are having with existing systems (like Vxrail), and how does Oxide fix those? What stories are you hearing?
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    > I don't really understand how having a larger minimum purchase unit (entire rack vs rack unit) is a USP. For some organizations cattle-like pizza boxes or chassis with blade systems are still not cattle-like enough. By making the management unit the entire rack you can reduce overhead (at least compared to a rack of individual servers, even if they are treated like cattle). There are vendors that will drop ship entire (multiple) racks pre-wired and pre-configured for various scenarios (especially HPC): just provide power, (water) cooling, and a network uplink.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    I wouldn't say that a larger purchase unit is a USP; it is an underlying reason why other USPs are able to be delivered. This is an engineering focused place, so I tended to focus on the engineering aspects. My sibling commentor just left a great answer to your second question, so I'll leave that one there :)
- noisy_boy 3y ago
  Seems like Oxide is aiming to be the Apple of the enterprise hardware (which isn't too surprising given the background of the people involved - Sun used to be something like that as were other fully-integrated providers, though granted that Sun didn't write Unix from scratch). Almost like coming to a full circle from the days where the hardware and the software was all done in an integrated fashion before Linux turned-up and started to run on your toaster. From your referenced comment: > The rack isn't built in such a way that you can just pull out a sled and shove it into another rack; the whole thing is built in a cohesive way. > other vendors will sell you a rack, but it's made up of 1U or 2U servers, not designed as a cohesive whole, but as a collection of individual parts What I'm curious about is how analogous or different is this cohesiveness to the days where vendors built the complete system? Is that the main selling point or there are nuances to it?
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Apple or Sun are common comparisons, yes :) > What I'm curious about is how analogous or different is this cohesiveness to the days where vendors built the complete system? To be honest, that was before my personal time. I was a kid in that era, using ultra hand-me-down hardware. I'd speculate that one large difference is that hardware was much, much simpler back then.
  - bcantrill 3y ago
    The holistic design is certainly a big piece of it. While we certainly admire aspects of both Apple and Sun (and we count formerly-Apple and formerly-Sun among our employees), we would also differentiate ourselves from both companies in critical dimensions: - Oxide is entirely open where Apple is extraordinarily secretive: all of our software (including the software at the lowest layers of the stack!) is open source, and we encourage Oxide employees to talk publicly about their work. - Oxide is taking a systems approach where Sun sold silo'd components: I have written about this before[0], but Sun struggled to really build whole systems. For Oxide, we have made an entire rack-level system that includes both hardware and software: the abstraction to the operator is as turn-key elastic infrastructure rather than as a kit car. We have tried to take the best of both companies (and for that matter, the best of all the companies we have worked) to deliver what customers want: a holistic system to deploy and operate on-premises infrastructure. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033
71a54xd 3y ago
It's like an on prem AWS for devs. I don't understand the use case but the hardware is cool.
electroly 3y ago
It's AWS Outposts Rack without the AWS connection. That is, you get a turnkey rack with the servers, networking, hypervisor, and support software preconfigured. You plug it into power and network and it's ready to run your VMs. Outposts, too, started with a full-rack configuration only, but they eventually introduced an individual server configuration as well. It'll be interesting to see if Oxide eventually decides to serve the smaller market that doesn't have the scale for whole-rack-at-a-time.
- Solvency 3y ago
  So what was the precursor solution to this before AWS?
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    A mainframe, usually acquired by calling up IBM/Unisys/etc. and writing a big cheque.
    - goombanast 3y ago
      [flagged]
  - electroly 3y ago
    The traditional enterprise option is to call up Dell and order a pre-validated VMware cluster. This will be a specific configuration of Dell hardware and VMware software that has been tested together, although it was not developed together.
  - daddylongstroke 3y ago
    dHCI.
shrubble 3y ago
It is a rack of servers, but, every aspect of it is supposed to be engineered to include the full list of things that are needed to make a rack of servers a useful VM hosting setup. So it includes the networking, connection to the service processors which allow you to remotely access each server, other management things, etc. Once installed, you plug in the network connection(s) and add power, then boot up. Then you can add your VMs and start running them.
- freeopinion 3y ago
  Except that you cut out all the fat of traditional servers. These aren't COTS servers. Imagine if somebody re-engineered an entire rack in the same way they once introduced blade computers. Any part that can be moved from standalone to rackwide should be cut out of individual shelves. So I would expect things like serial buses, video, certain power aspects, etc to all be removed from the individual shelves. When you cut out all that fat, you can fit a lot more muscle in its place. Then you can arrange everything on a rack scale for airflow, power, redundancy, etc. The obvious downside is that you are locked into a single supplier for everything in the rack. Somebody please add a link here for Oxide's strategy to minimize this risk for their customers. (And feel free to correct any mistaken over-simplification.) Overall, they have seemed incredibly open to sharing in a way that allows others to play. That might just be because they would die if they didn't, but I think a lot of people are willing to accept that they are pretty all-around awesome folks trying to make the world better. And making money in the process is not a bad gig. We'll see which other vendors jump into the pool. I wish them great success. But I'm wondering why they haven't coordinated my shipping address for their first shipment. First one's free, right?
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    > When you cut out all that fat, you can fit a lot more muscle in its place. Then you can arrange everything on a rack scale for airflow, power, redundancy, etc. This is not really true. Data center servers are highly optimized for density already. Like tens of thousands of hours on airflow CFD, tweaking cases and fans and internal layout, heatsink design, etc. chasing the 0.1%s. There are many significant tradeoffs to be made, but there is not a large factor improvement just sitting on the shelf due to a bunch of unused legacy leftovers.
panick21_ 3y ago
I don't get it. What hard to understand? They are selling servers, specifically in a rack. This has been a discussion in every thread and its pretty clear on their landing page.

steveklabnik 3y ago

I wrote this a while back, does that help? Happy to elaborate. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30678324

anaisbetts 3y ago
Perfect - now get that 2nd paragraph on the landing page somehow!
wcerfgba 3y ago
I don't really understand how having a larger minimum purchase unit (entire rack vs rack unit) is a USP. Your comments explain the emphasis on tighter integration across the stack, but it doesn't clearly show why this is a benefit. What are the problems people are having with existing systems (like Vxrail), and how does Oxide fix those? What stories are you hearing?
- throw0101a 3y ago
  > I don't really understand how having a larger minimum purchase unit (entire rack vs rack unit) is a USP. For some organizations cattle-like pizza boxes or chassis with blade systems are still not cattle-like enough. By making the management unit the entire rack you can reduce overhead (at least compared to a rack of individual servers, even if they are treated like cattle). There are vendors that will drop ship entire (multiple) racks pre-wired and pre-configured for various scenarios (especially HPC): just provide power, (water) cooling, and a network uplink.
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  I wouldn't say that a larger purchase unit is a USP; it is an underlying reason why other USPs are able to be delivered. This is an engineering focused place, so I tended to focus on the engineering aspects. My sibling commentor just left a great answer to your second question, so I'll leave that one there :)
noisy_boy 3y ago
Seems like Oxide is aiming to be the Apple of the enterprise hardware (which isn't too surprising given the background of the people involved - Sun used to be something like that as were other fully-integrated providers, though granted that Sun didn't write Unix from scratch). Almost like coming to a full circle from the days where the hardware and the software was all done in an integrated fashion before Linux turned-up and started to run on your toaster. From your referenced comment: > The rack isn't built in such a way that you can just pull out a sled and shove it into another rack; the whole thing is built in a cohesive way. > other vendors will sell you a rack, but it's made up of 1U or 2U servers, not designed as a cohesive whole, but as a collection of individual parts What I'm curious about is how analogous or different is this cohesiveness to the days where vendors built the complete system? Is that the main selling point or there are nuances to it?
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Apple or Sun are common comparisons, yes :) > What I'm curious about is how analogous or different is this cohesiveness to the days where vendors built the complete system? To be honest, that was before my personal time. I was a kid in that era, using ultra hand-me-down hardware. I'd speculate that one large difference is that hardware was much, much simpler back then.
- bcantrill 3y ago
  The holistic design is certainly a big piece of it. While we certainly admire aspects of both Apple and Sun (and we count formerly-Apple and formerly-Sun among our employees), we would also differentiate ourselves from both companies in critical dimensions: - Oxide is entirely open where Apple is extraordinarily secretive: all of our software (including the software at the lowest layers of the stack!) is open source, and we encourage Oxide employees to talk publicly about their work. - Oxide is taking a systems approach where Sun sold silo'd components: I have written about this before[0], but Sun struggled to really build whole systems. For Oxide, we have made an entire rack-level system that includes both hardware and software: the abstraction to the operator is as turn-key elastic infrastructure rather than as a kit car. We have tried to take the best of both companies (and for that matter, the best of all the companies we have worked) to deliver what customers want: a holistic system to deploy and operate on-premises infrastructure. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287033

71a54xd 3y ago

It's like an on prem AWS for devs. I don't understand the use case but the hardware is cool.

electroly 3y ago

It's AWS Outposts Rack without the AWS connection. That is, you get a turnkey rack with the servers, networking, hypervisor, and support software preconfigured. You plug it into power and network and it's ready to run your VMs. Outposts, too, started with a full-rack configuration only, but they eventually introduced an individual server configuration as well. It'll be interesting to see if Oxide eventually decides to serve the smaller market that doesn't have the scale for whole-rack-at-a-time.

Solvency 3y ago
So what was the precursor solution to this before AWS?
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  A mainframe, usually acquired by calling up IBM/Unisys/etc. and writing a big cheque.
  - goombanast 3y ago
    [flagged]
- electroly 3y ago
  The traditional enterprise option is to call up Dell and order a pre-validated VMware cluster. This will be a specific configuration of Dell hardware and VMware software that has been tested together, although it was not developed together.
- daddylongstroke 3y ago
  dHCI.

shrubble 3y ago

It is a rack of servers, but, every aspect of it is supposed to be engineered to include the full list of things that are needed to make a rack of servers a useful VM hosting setup. So it includes the networking, connection to the service processors which allow you to remotely access each server, other management things, etc. Once installed, you plug in the network connection(s) and add power, then boot up. Then you can add your VMs and start running them.

freeopinion 3y ago
Except that you cut out all the fat of traditional servers. These aren't COTS servers. Imagine if somebody re-engineered an entire rack in the same way they once introduced blade computers. Any part that can be moved from standalone to rackwide should be cut out of individual shelves. So I would expect things like serial buses, video, certain power aspects, etc to all be removed from the individual shelves. When you cut out all that fat, you can fit a lot more muscle in its place. Then you can arrange everything on a rack scale for airflow, power, redundancy, etc. The obvious downside is that you are locked into a single supplier for everything in the rack. Somebody please add a link here for Oxide's strategy to minimize this risk for their customers. (And feel free to correct any mistaken over-simplification.) Overall, they have seemed incredibly open to sharing in a way that allows others to play. That might just be because they would die if they didn't, but I think a lot of people are willing to accept that they are pretty all-around awesome folks trying to make the world better. And making money in the process is not a bad gig. We'll see which other vendors jump into the pool. I wish them great success. But I'm wondering why they haven't coordinated my shipping address for their first shipment. First one's free, right?
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  > When you cut out all that fat, you can fit a lot more muscle in its place. Then you can arrange everything on a rack scale for airflow, power, redundancy, etc. This is not really true. Data center servers are highly optimized for density already. Like tens of thousands of hours on airflow CFD, tweaking cases and fans and internal layout, heatsink design, etc. chasing the 0.1%s. There are many significant tradeoffs to be made, but there is not a large factor improvement just sitting on the shelf due to a bunch of unused legacy leftovers.

panick21_ 3y ago

I don't get it. What hard to understand? They are selling servers, specifically in a rack. This has been a discussion in every thread and its pretty clear on their landing page.