20 ms·

This is actually a pretty big deal. They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps sh

by fefe23 3y ago

This is actually a pretty big deal. They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration problem. They integrated it. It comes with all the features they expect you to want if you wanted to build your own cloud. Also, they wrote the software. And it's all open source. So no "sorry but the third party vendor dropped support for the bios". You get the source code. Even if Oxide goes bust, you can still salvage things in a pinch. Ironically this looks like the realization of Richard Stallman's dream where users can help each other if something doesn't work.

throw0101a 3y ago
> They sell servers, but as a finished product. They sell rack-as-compute.[0] Their minimum order is one rack: You plug in power and network, connect to the built-in management software (API), and start spinning up VMs. [0] With built-in networking and storage.
- steve1977 3y ago
  So just hyperconverged infrastructure with a cute name?
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    “Just” is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. This achievement is clearly worth a lot to people.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - throw0101a 3y ago
    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 https://docs.oxide.computer/api/guides/responses
    - steve1977 3y ago
      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.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        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.
      - intelVISA 3y ago
        oh, you tease.
      - freeopinion 3y ago
        So, you're saying this is just ho-hum, and you're sticking with your IBM 700 from the 1950s?
  - zeckalpha 3y ago
    Mainframes!
    - throw0101c 3y ago
      With source code availability: https://github.com/oxidecomputer https://github.com/oxidecomputer
      - Annatar 3y ago
        [dead]
    - zozbot234 3y ago
      "Real" mainframes have RAS (Reliability, Availability, Servicing) features such as hotswapping for all hardware components and automated HA/workload migration across physical racks. They can also do SSI (single system image), i.e. run a single workload across physical nodes/racks as if it was just multiple 'cores' in a single shared-memory computer. Oxide computers will probably end up doing at least some of this (namely workload migration across racks for HA) but saying that it can comprehensively replace mainframe hardware as-is is a bit of a stretch. In terms of existing hardware it's closer to a midrange computer.
      - NortySpock 3y ago
        The Oxide and Friends podcast had an episode on virtualizing time, specifically for the purpose of live-migrating a container from rack to rack without the VM being aware, and allowing operators to take the rack offline on their schedule. Otherwise, apparently, you end up having to leave racks running because you cannot evacuate all of the containers currently running on it. (e.g. perhaps your contracts or SLAs are such that you cannot afford even the few seconds of downtime a shut-down-here-and-spin-up-elsewhere would cause) I believe the episode name was "Virtualizing Time" https://pca.st/episode/c10ce39c-1348-407f-b9c2-a36ced4e6be8 https://pca.st/episode/c10ce39c-1348-407f-b9c2-a36ced4e6be8
      - ahhfgsado6698 3y ago
        [dead]
  - dustingetz 3y ago
    way better explanation than the website copy "no cables no assembly just cloud" wtf is that
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      Obviously different marketing copy speaks to different people. But that is referring to how, when you buy a rack from us, you don't need to put everything together and cable it all up: you pull it out of the box, plug in networking and power, boot the thing up, and you're good to go. Installation time is hours, not days or weeks, which is the norm.
      - MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Will you be selling services as well, such as taking care of installation, boot up, testing, validation, etc., for a fee?
        steveklabnik 3y ago
        At this stage of the company, everyone gets a white-glove installation process. I suspect that will change over time but I don't work on that part of things, so I don't personally know the details.
        MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Thanks, are the specific details standardized and available in writing? Or is it more tailored to each customer?
        steveklabnik 3y ago
        Sorry to be slightly obtuse, which details are you referring to here? Help upon installation? At the moment, we are helping customers individually, yeah. But we do have a documented process we are following https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/system/rack-installation-process https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/system/rack-installation-... (and more on other pages there)
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    Available to buy turnkey, not just rented out.
  - unixhero 3y ago
    There is no just in hyper
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    When you start a container in AWS, do you think Amazon is letting you run that without a VM? VMs are pretty lightweight these days.
  - drzaiusx11 3y ago
    With hypervisor support it really isn't
    - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
      What this guy said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38024122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38024122 If you have a rack like that you'd probably want it to run a real database or server backend.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Have they basically done for the data centre what iMac did for computers in about year 1999 (or whenever!)
  - repelsteeltje 3y ago
    > what iMac did for computers in about year 1999 Ehrm. What is that exactly? Are you alluding to cute design, different user interface? Or ditching then common PC component modularity? "Thinking differently"? One difference is that Oxide development was done in the open and they don't seem hell bent on creating a closed ecosystem. (Yet, at least)
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      I think Oxide shares one idea with Apple: hardware and software should be created for each other. In that sense, your parent is correct. You are also correct that we diverge from Apple in other ways, such as our commitment to openness, rather than secrecy.
      - quickthrower2 3y ago
        Yes. I imagine I got downvoted because it sounds like a snark but it wasn’t meant to be.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sangnoir 3y ago
      > Ehrm. What is that exactly? The first iMac famously made it easy to connect to the Internet; The 'i' in iMac was for "Internet". Its setup manual was a couple of pages long, mostly pictures and IIRC, just 37 words.
  - nonameiguess 3y ago
    Brutal downvotes. I guess people forget the old Jeff Goldblum commercials? "There is no step 3." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PzvWgu6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PzvWgu6c
- cryptonector 3y ago
  It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Cooling, power supply, compute, storage, and network, all in a box. You supply power, a big network pipe, and the piping to external heat exchangers.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
    There are quite a few companies selling “modular data centers” now.
  - dthul 3y ago
    I know one company who offers that (there might be more): https://www.grando.ai/en/container https://www.grando.ai/en/container
  - anewlanguage 3y ago
    AWS does that already for the defense industry: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-aws-modular-data-center-u-s-department-defense-joint-warfighting-cloud-capability https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-aws-mod...
  - jjav 3y ago
    > It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Sun did that experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter
    - cryptonector 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm aware, but I didn't think they were serious about it.
      - ahl 3y ago
        That's entirely fair: Sun wasn't serious about most of the products they rolled out... and customers noticed.
      - deleted 3y ago
socrates137 3y ago
100%. I’m actually extremely impressed. I want one. I haven’t worked in a data center in years, but I’d be tempted to do it again just to get my hands on one.
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  Same here. I really want to work on one of these. I got in the industry at the tail end of the time when people used Sun and DEC gear. I got to use just a little bit of it and it seemed so much more "put together" then PC stuff is even now. Oxide feels like it'll be that "integrated" experience, but with the added benefit of software freedom.
- fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
  I wish they’d sell a tabletop version for hobbyists, but realize this is probably a distraction. But… the problem with a lot of these systems (including the old Sun boxes and things like ibm mainframes and the AS/400) is that they sound cool but there’s no real way for the typical new developer to “get into them” for fun and, as a result, you lose the chance for some developer selling it to their company based on his experience with the things.
  - acct-litter-zed 3y ago
    Apparently (I don't remember it, although I probably did read the Byte magazine at the time) there was a rumor in the early 1980s that IBM's PC was going to be a shrunken 370, called the 380. [1][2] I wish IBM would shrink their LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 Rack Mount down to at least an "under the desktop" model. To my knowledge, IBM still makes quality products and has excellent customer service. They have fun names too (Rockhopper and Emperor are types of penguins!) and they even have 3D models of their rack mount cloud computers with shadows. [3] In fact, when I first read about Oxide a year or two ago, I searched for "IBM cloud server", and left it at that. So IBM, could you please send someone from the LinuxONE down to Boca Raton to create our new PC? :) Thanks! P.S. I would even accept a shrunken 370. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer [2] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-01/page/n313/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-01/page/n313/... [3] https://www.ibm.com/demos/it-infrastructure/ux/product.html#19/1994;C1165 https://www.ibm.com/demos/it-infrastructure/ux/product.html#...
pid-1 3y ago
While working in telecom data centers circa 2016 I've seen many single rack computers from Dell, IBM, HP, Huawei... Not sure that's a new ideia, ex. the open source bits.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  I think Dell, IBM & HP all went through a "blade" era where they built cableless systems that plugged into a backplane.
ollybee 3y ago
Existing vendors will provide rack integration services and deliver a turn key solution like this. Also vendors of virtualization management software have partnerships with hardware suppliers and be happy to deliver fully integrated solutions if you're buying by the rack. The difference is in those cases you have flexibility in the design which seems to be missing here. Proxmox and a full rack of Supermicro gear would not be as sophisticated, but end result is pretty much the same, with I imagine far far better bang for buck. I like it, but it doesn't seem like a big deal or revolutionary in any way.
- growse 3y ago
  Those of us who've bought large "turn-key" solutions from Dell etc. have often discovered that it's actually just a cobbled-together bunch of things which may or may not work well together on a good day, depending on what you're trying to do. Just because it's all got the word "Dell" written on it, doesn't mean that the components were all engineered by people who were working together to build a single working system. When it breaks, good luck!
  - EvanAnderson 3y ago
    Total agreement. Another point: Having the "Dell" name on the front doesn't give you a "throat to choke" as so many people seem to think is important. Unless you're very large scale then, at best, you can threaten them that they don't get your next business. You're certainly not going to get help. You're no worse-off with Oxide from that perspective. Their open source firmware means that thr opportunity to pay somebody else to support you at least exists.
    - tomnipotent 3y ago
      > that they don't get your next business. Even small shops can use bad experience as leverage for credits and discounts, especially if the vendor has account managers. This is one of the (few) benefits of having a human involved in invoicing vs. self-serve.
  - deleted 3y ago
silverlake 3y ago
How is this different from AWS Outpost?
- ale42 3y ago
  I guess Outpost is not open source?
- samcat116 3y ago
  This is a one time cost, AWS is a rent only model
- skywhopper 3y ago
  You own this. AWS Outpost is leased and you still also pay for the resource usage on top of the outpost unit itself. And this would not be integrated with your AWS account.
  - electroly 3y ago
    It's mostly not true that you still pay for resource usage on top of the Outpost unit. That's only true, AFAIK, for EBS local snapshots and Route 53 Resolver endpoints. The big boys--EC2 instances, S3 storage, and EBS volumes--are all "free" on Outposts. That is, included in the cost of the unit and not double-charged. Charging for EBS local snapshots on your own Outpost S3 storage and Route 53 Resolvers on your own compute is a weird one. I don't know how they defend that. To me, it seems indefensible.
    - willglynn 3y ago
      AWS Outposts are leased: > You can purchase Outposts servers capacity for a three-year term and choose between three payment options: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. … At the end of your Outposts servers term, you can either renew your subscription and keep your Outposts server(s), or return your Outposts server(s). If you do not notify AWS of your selection before the end of your term, your Outposts server(s) will be renewed on a monthly basis, at the rate of the No Upfront payment option corresponding to your Outposts server configuration. https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/pricing/ > You can purchase Outposts rack capacity for a 3-year term … either renew your subscription and keep your existing Outposts rack(s), or return your Outposts rack(s) https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/ There is no permanent purchase option.
kristianpaul 3y ago
This is a turn-key solution, ready to use without eventually dealing with multiple devices with its own firmware and caveats revealing after where put to work together. The closest to that is that AWS managed rack that works with the web APIS you know already
- ec109685 3y ago
  AWS only rents their racks and are very expensive. I do wonder if AWS will eventually go down market if oxide gets any scale. It seems like AWS has all the pieces to compete with Oxide if they care to.
hlandau 3y ago
>Even if Oxide goes bust, you can still salvage things in a pinch. Is this true? Can you set your own root of trust for the firmware signing key and build and deploy it yourself?
- mlindner 3y ago
  I would assume so. They've said before you can make modifications to the firmware and deploy it yourself if you so wish. That's one of the major reasons that making the firmware open source is so useful.
la64710 3y ago
On site backup inventory DC build out cost and effort Power cooling requirements Dark fiber bandwidth requirement New headcount to support all this No thanks , I have widgets to make and sell and a business to run.
- monocasa 3y ago
  It's meant for orgs running at a certain scale, but you'd be surprised how early that starts making sense. AWS isn't exactly paying the economy of scale savings on to you.
  - la64710 3y ago
    True but at for companies operating at scale they not only operate on AWS but on other cloud providers as well as legacy data centers … but business wise it’s a hard sell , it may sell for couple of cycles to build a new dc or use an existing ones but then it will be back to the cloud again for many more cycles.
    - monocasa 3y ago
      I've found that the scale these start making sense is only a handful of racks. We're not talking full DCs, but a room in a building or some colo space. And beyond that, there's all sorts of weird environments that need a lot of local compute. You'd be shocked how many servers are on a cruise ship for one example among many.
- skywhopper 3y ago
  Your business model is not the only one in existence.
gigatexal 3y ago
Anyone know specs or prices?
- steveklabnik 3y ago
  Specs are here: https://oxide.computer/product/specifications https://oxide.computer/product/specifications Prices are here: https://oxide.computer/sales https://oxide.computer/sales ;)
  - sorenbs 3y ago
    I know you are half joking, but it would really be helpful to have ball-park pricing available. Are we talking Sun-level markups here, or how should we think about it? Given the enterprise sales contact form, I'm thinking yes, but I'd love to know for sure.
    - steveklabnik 3y ago
      > how should we think about it? I am not in sales and so I hesitate to speak on it in case I am incorrect, but the way that I personally think about it is that it is true that it is not an inexpensive product: there's a LOT of computer here. But the goal is to be competitively priced.
    - vhodges 3y ago
      The last time (one of them) Oxide hit HN there were some ballpark estimates based on the CPUs in use, switches etc. Someone else said 500K and up. I wish there was a 4U version (10-25K but I don't think that they could come close to that price point - regardless even that is out of reach for me to ever get to play on one :-/ )
      - glandium 3y ago
        I guess you're thinking 4U blade enclosures? That would certainly be interesting.
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 3y ago
Awesome. This would be especially useful in science but the lack of GPUs is a non-starter. :(
goldinfra 3y ago
Coupling vs Decoupling is not some one-sided thing. It's a major trade-off. One of the most obvious examples of the problem with this approach is that they're shipping previous generation servers on Day 1. One can easily buy current generation AMD servers from a number of vendors. They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors that are forced to compete head-to-head for a specific role (server vendor, switch vendor, etc). Their coupling approach will most likely leave them perpetually behind and more expensive. But there are advantages too. Their stuff should be simpler to use and require less in-house expertise to operate well. This is probably a reasonable trade-off for government agencies and the like, but will probably never be ideal for more savvy customers. And I don't know how truly open source their work is but if it's truly open source, they'll most likely find themselves turned into a software company with an open core model. Other vendors that are already at scale can almost certainly assemble hardware better than they can.
- lostdog 3y ago
  If they standardize and open the server shape and plug interface then it gets really cool. Then I could go design a GPU server myself and add it to their rack. The rack is no longer a hyperconverged single-user proprietary setup and becomes something that can be extended and repurposed.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    "The Framework Cloud"
- dangoor 3y ago
  > They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors It seems like they're trying to hit a middle ground between cloud vendors and fully decoupled server equipment companies. Using Oxide is likely cheaper over the life of the hardware than using a cloud vendor. A company who already has in-house expertise on running racks of systems may be less the target market here than people who want to do cloud computing but under their own control.
  - 3y ago
pxc 3y ago
> Ironically this looks like the realization of Richard Stallman's dream where users can help each other if something doesn't work. How is it ironic?
Upvoter33 3y ago
I don't see it as a big deal - rather, I see it as a huge amount of venture cap spent on some very bright people to build something no one really wants, or, at best, is niche. Also, it has little to do with the cloud; it is yet another hyperconverged infra. Weirdly, it is attached to something very few people want: Solaris. This relates to the people behind it who still can't figure out why Linux won and Solaris didn't.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  > something no one really wants, or, at best, is niche Could be! Seems too early to tell though, and remains to be seen whether it pencils. Which is the whole idea of starting a new venture, no?
- Voultapher 3y ago
  Right, who wants or benefits from open source firmware anyway. Also there are many situations where renting, for example a flat makes a lot of sense. And there are many situations where the financials and or enabled options of owning something make a lot of sense. Right now, the kind of experience you get with AWS and co. can only be rented, not bought. Some people want to buy houses instead of renting them.
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    >Right, who wants or benefits from open source firmware anyway. Their competition has open source firmware as well: https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/enabling-open-embedded-systems-management-on-poweredge-servers/ https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/enabling-open-embedded-syste...
    - bcantrill 3y ago
      So OpenBMC is fine (happy for them!), but having open firmware is much deeper and broader than that: yes, it's the service processor (in contrast to the BMC which is a closed part on Dell machines) -- but it's also the root-of-trust and (especially) the host CPU itself. We at Oxide have open source software from first instruction out of the AMD PSP; I elaborated more on our approach in my OSFC 2022 talk.[0] [0] https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-not-to-open-it-the-need-for-holistic-systems/ https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-...
ChuckMcM 3y ago
Its a huge deal. I'm biased though because my own takes on how things should evolve were very similar. I was however completely unsuccessful in getting those ideas into production! And that, that is a huge deal. Through out my career it has been interesting to meet people with great ideas and then they are unable to get them into production, and when the idea does come into production everyone feels like "Wow, this is so obvious why didn't we do it sooner?" and some folks are banging their head against the wall :-). One of the more interesting discussions I had during my tenure at Google was about the "size" of the unit of clusters. If you toured Google you got the whole "millions of cheap replaceable computers" mantra. Sitting in Building 42 was a "rack" which had cheap PC motherboards on "pizza dishes" without all that superfluous sheet metal. Bunches of these in a rack and a festoon of network cables. What are the "first class" elements of these machines? Compute? Networking? Storage? Did you replace components? Or a whole "pizza slice" (which Google called an 'index' at the time). Really a great systems analysis problem. FWIW I'm more of a "chunk" guy (which is the direction 0xide went) and less of a "cluster" guy (which is the way Google organized their infrastructure). A lot of people associated with 0xide are folks I worked with at Sun in the early days and during that period the first hints of "beowulf" clusters vs "super computers", was memory one thing (UMA) or did it vary from place to place (NUMA). I have a paper I wrote from that time about "compute viscosity" where the effective compute rate (which at the time largely focused on transactional databases) scaled up with resource (more memory more transactions/sec for example) and scaled down with viscosity (higher latencies to get to state meant fewer transactions/sec) Sun was invested heavily in the TPC-C benchmarks at the time but they were just one load pattern one could optimize for. These guys have capitalized on all that history and it is fucking amazing! I just hope they don't get killed by acquisition[1]. [1] KbA is a technique where people who are invested in the status quo and have resources available use those resources to force the investors in a disruptive technology to sell to them and then they quietly bury the disruptive technology.
- mgh95 3y ago
  Can you clarify a bit on what you mean by "chunk" guy? Are you alluding to the ability to distribute work by an isolation mechanism such as cgroups vs machine a-la borg/google?
ThinkBeat 3y ago
IBM invented this a long time ago. Mainframes. >They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration >problem. They integrated it.
zemo 3y ago
> Ironically this looks like the realization of Richard Stallman's dream where users can help each other if something doesn't work. that's only true if you think that "users" means "people who operate cloud computers", which is about as far from understanding what Stallman is talking about as is possible. Someone who makes SaaS and runs it on an Oxide computer is no less of a rentier capitalist than someone who makes SaaS and runs it on AWS.

by fefe23 3y ago

throw0101a 3y ago

> They sell servers, but as a finished product. They sell rack-as-compute.[0] Their minimum order is one rack: You plug in power and network, connect to the built-in management software (API), and start spinning up VMs. [0] With built-in networking and storage.

steve1977 3y ago
So just hyperconverged infrastructure with a cute name?
- danpalmer 3y ago
  “Just” is doing a lot of lifting in that sentence. This achievement is clearly worth a lot to people.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- throw0101a 3y ago
  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 https://docs.oxide.computer/api/guides/responses
  - steve1977 3y ago
    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.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      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.
    - intelVISA 3y ago
      oh, you tease.
    - freeopinion 3y ago
      So, you're saying this is just ho-hum, and you're sticking with your IBM 700 from the 1950s?
- zeckalpha 3y ago
  Mainframes!
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    With source code availability: https://github.com/oxidecomputer https://github.com/oxidecomputer
    - Annatar 3y ago
      [dead]
  - zozbot234 3y ago
    "Real" mainframes have RAS (Reliability, Availability, Servicing) features such as hotswapping for all hardware components and automated HA/workload migration across physical racks. They can also do SSI (single system image), i.e. run a single workload across physical nodes/racks as if it was just multiple 'cores' in a single shared-memory computer. Oxide computers will probably end up doing at least some of this (namely workload migration across racks for HA) but saying that it can comprehensively replace mainframe hardware as-is is a bit of a stretch. In terms of existing hardware it's closer to a midrange computer.
    - NortySpock 3y ago
      The Oxide and Friends podcast had an episode on virtualizing time, specifically for the purpose of live-migrating a container from rack to rack without the VM being aware, and allowing operators to take the rack offline on their schedule. Otherwise, apparently, you end up having to leave racks running because you cannot evacuate all of the containers currently running on it. (e.g. perhaps your contracts or SLAs are such that you cannot afford even the few seconds of downtime a shut-down-here-and-spin-up-elsewhere would cause) I believe the episode name was "Virtualizing Time" https://pca.st/episode/c10ce39c-1348-407f-b9c2-a36ced4e6be8 https://pca.st/episode/c10ce39c-1348-407f-b9c2-a36ced4e6be8
    - ahhfgsado6698 3y ago
      [dead]
- dustingetz 3y ago
  way better explanation than the website copy "no cables no assembly just cloud" wtf is that
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    Obviously different marketing copy speaks to different people. But that is referring to how, when you buy a rack from us, you don't need to put everything together and cable it all up: you pull it out of the box, plug in networking and power, boot the thing up, and you're good to go. Installation time is hours, not days or weeks, which is the norm.
    - MichaelZuo 3y ago
      Will you be selling services as well, such as taking care of installation, boot up, testing, validation, etc., for a fee?
      - steveklabnik 3y ago
        At this stage of the company, everyone gets a white-glove installation process. I suspect that will change over time but I don't work on that part of things, so I don't personally know the details.
        MichaelZuo 3y ago
        Thanks, are the specific details standardized and available in writing? Or is it more tailored to each customer?
        steveklabnik 3y ago
        Sorry to be slightly obtuse, which details are you referring to here? Help upon installation? At the moment, we are helping customers individually, yeah. But we do have a documented process we are following https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/system/rack-installation-process https://docs.oxide.computer/guides/system/rack-installation-... (and more on other pages there)
- rcxdude 3y ago
  Available to buy turnkey, not just rented out.
- unixhero 3y ago
  There is no just in hyper
otabdeveloper4 3y ago
[flagged]
- pclmulqdq 3y ago
  When you start a container in AWS, do you think Amazon is letting you run that without a VM? VMs are pretty lightweight these days.
- drzaiusx11 3y ago
  With hypervisor support it really isn't
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    What this guy said: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38024122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38024122 If you have a rack like that you'd probably want it to run a real database or server backend.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Have they basically done for the data centre what iMac did for computers in about year 1999 (or whenever!)
- repelsteeltje 3y ago
  > what iMac did for computers in about year 1999 Ehrm. What is that exactly? Are you alluding to cute design, different user interface? Or ditching then common PC component modularity? "Thinking differently"? One difference is that Oxide development was done in the open and they don't seem hell bent on creating a closed ecosystem. (Yet, at least)
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    I think Oxide shares one idea with Apple: hardware and software should be created for each other. In that sense, your parent is correct. You are also correct that we diverge from Apple in other ways, such as our commitment to openness, rather than secrecy.
    - quickthrower2 3y ago
      Yes. I imagine I got downvoted because it sounds like a snark but it wasn’t meant to be.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sangnoir 3y ago
    > Ehrm. What is that exactly? The first iMac famously made it easy to connect to the Internet; The 'i' in iMac was for "Internet". Its setup manual was a couple of pages long, mostly pictures and IIRC, just 37 words.
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  Brutal downvotes. I guess people forget the old Jeff Goldblum commercials? "There is no step 3." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PzvWgu6c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX4PzvWgu6c
cryptonector 3y ago
It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Cooling, power supply, compute, storage, and network, all in a box. You supply power, a big network pipe, and the piping to external heat exchangers.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y ago
  There are quite a few companies selling “modular data centers” now.
- dthul 3y ago
  I know one company who offers that (there might be more): https://www.grando.ai/en/container https://www.grando.ai/en/container
- anewlanguage 3y ago
  AWS does that already for the defense industry: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-aws-modular-data-center-u-s-department-defense-joint-warfighting-cloud-capability https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/announcing-aws-mod...
- jjav 3y ago
  > It would be interesting to sell a data center in a container. Sun did that experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Modular_Datacenter
  - cryptonector 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm aware, but I didn't think they were serious about it.
    - ahl 3y ago
      That's entirely fair: Sun wasn't serious about most of the products they rolled out... and customers noticed.
    - deleted 3y ago

socrates137 3y ago

100%. I’m actually extremely impressed. I want one. I haven’t worked in a data center in years, but I’d be tempted to do it again just to get my hands on one.

EvanAnderson 3y ago
Same here. I really want to work on one of these. I got in the industry at the tail end of the time when people used Sun and DEC gear. I got to use just a little bit of it and it seemed so much more "put together" then PC stuff is even now. Oxide feels like it'll be that "integrated" experience, but with the added benefit of software freedom.
fiddlerwoaroof 3y ago
I wish they’d sell a tabletop version for hobbyists, but realize this is probably a distraction. But… the problem with a lot of these systems (including the old Sun boxes and things like ibm mainframes and the AS/400) is that they sound cool but there’s no real way for the typical new developer to “get into them” for fun and, as a result, you lose the chance for some developer selling it to their company based on his experience with the things.
- acct-litter-zed 3y ago
  Apparently (I don't remember it, although I probably did read the Byte magazine at the time) there was a rumor in the early 1980s that IBM's PC was going to be a shrunken 370, called the 380. [1][2] I wish IBM would shrink their LinuxONE Rockhopper 4 Rack Mount down to at least an "under the desktop" model. To my knowledge, IBM still makes quality products and has excellent customer service. They have fun names too (Rockhopper and Emperor are types of penguins!) and they even have 3D models of their rack mount cloud computers with shadows. [3] In fact, when I first read about Oxide a year or two ago, I searched for "IBM cloud server", and left it at that. So IBM, could you please send someone from the LinuxONE down to Boca Raton to create our new PC? :) Thanks! P.S. I would even accept a shrunken 370. :) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer [2] https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-01/page/n313/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-01/page/n313/... [3] https://www.ibm.com/demos/it-infrastructure/ux/product.html#19/1994;C1165 https://www.ibm.com/demos/it-infrastructure/ux/product.html#...

pid-1 3y ago

While working in telecom data centers circa 2016 I've seen many single rack computers from Dell, IBM, HP, Huawei... Not sure that's a new ideia, ex. the open source bits.

yencabulator 3y ago
I think Dell, IBM & HP all went through a "blade" era where they built cableless systems that plugged into a backplane.

ollybee 3y ago

Existing vendors will provide rack integration services and deliver a turn key solution like this. Also vendors of virtualization management software have partnerships with hardware suppliers and be happy to deliver fully integrated solutions if you're buying by the rack. The difference is in those cases you have flexibility in the design which seems to be missing here. Proxmox and a full rack of Supermicro gear would not be as sophisticated, but end result is pretty much the same, with I imagine far far better bang for buck. I like it, but it doesn't seem like a big deal or revolutionary in any way.

growse 3y ago
Those of us who've bought large "turn-key" solutions from Dell etc. have often discovered that it's actually just a cobbled-together bunch of things which may or may not work well together on a good day, depending on what you're trying to do. Just because it's all got the word "Dell" written on it, doesn't mean that the components were all engineered by people who were working together to build a single working system. When it breaks, good luck!
- EvanAnderson 3y ago
  Total agreement. Another point: Having the "Dell" name on the front doesn't give you a "throat to choke" as so many people seem to think is important. Unless you're very large scale then, at best, you can threaten them that they don't get your next business. You're certainly not going to get help. You're no worse-off with Oxide from that perspective. Their open source firmware means that thr opportunity to pay somebody else to support you at least exists.
  - tomnipotent 3y ago
    > that they don't get your next business. Even small shops can use bad experience as leverage for credits and discounts, especially if the vendor has account managers. This is one of the (few) benefits of having a human involved in invoicing vs. self-serve.
- deleted 3y ago

silverlake 3y ago

How is this different from AWS Outpost?

ale42 3y ago
I guess Outpost is not open source?
samcat116 3y ago
This is a one time cost, AWS is a rent only model
skywhopper 3y ago
You own this. AWS Outpost is leased and you still also pay for the resource usage on top of the outpost unit itself. And this would not be integrated with your AWS account.
- electroly 3y ago
  It's mostly not true that you still pay for resource usage on top of the Outpost unit. That's only true, AFAIK, for EBS local snapshots and Route 53 Resolver endpoints. The big boys--EC2 instances, S3 storage, and EBS volumes--are all "free" on Outposts. That is, included in the cost of the unit and not double-charged. Charging for EBS local snapshots on your own Outpost S3 storage and Route 53 Resolvers on your own compute is a weird one. I don't know how they defend that. To me, it seems indefensible.
  - willglynn 3y ago
    AWS Outposts are leased: > You can purchase Outposts servers capacity for a three-year term and choose between three payment options: All Upfront, Partial Upfront, and No Upfront. … At the end of your Outposts servers term, you can either renew your subscription and keep your Outposts server(s), or return your Outposts server(s). If you do not notify AWS of your selection before the end of your term, your Outposts server(s) will be renewed on a monthly basis, at the rate of the No Upfront payment option corresponding to your Outposts server configuration. https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/servers/pricing/ > You can purchase Outposts rack capacity for a 3-year term … either renew your subscription and keep your existing Outposts rack(s), or return your Outposts rack(s) https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/ https://aws.amazon.com/outposts/rack/pricing/ There is no permanent purchase option.

kristianpaul 3y ago

This is a turn-key solution, ready to use without eventually dealing with multiple devices with its own firmware and caveats revealing after where put to work together. The closest to that is that AWS managed rack that works with the web APIS you know already

ec109685 3y ago
AWS only rents their racks and are very expensive. I do wonder if AWS will eventually go down market if oxide gets any scale. It seems like AWS has all the pieces to compete with Oxide if they care to.

hlandau 3y ago

>Even if Oxide goes bust, you can still salvage things in a pinch. Is this true? Can you set your own root of trust for the firmware signing key and build and deploy it yourself?

mlindner 3y ago
I would assume so. They've said before you can make modifications to the firmware and deploy it yourself if you so wish. That's one of the major reasons that making the firmware open source is so useful.

la64710 3y ago

On site backup inventory DC build out cost and effort Power cooling requirements Dark fiber bandwidth requirement New headcount to support all this No thanks , I have widgets to make and sell and a business to run.

monocasa 3y ago
It's meant for orgs running at a certain scale, but you'd be surprised how early that starts making sense. AWS isn't exactly paying the economy of scale savings on to you.
- la64710 3y ago
  True but at for companies operating at scale they not only operate on AWS but on other cloud providers as well as legacy data centers … but business wise it’s a hard sell , it may sell for couple of cycles to build a new dc or use an existing ones but then it will be back to the cloud again for many more cycles.
  - monocasa 3y ago
    I've found that the scale these start making sense is only a handful of racks. We're not talking full DCs, but a room in a building or some colo space. And beyond that, there's all sorts of weird environments that need a lot of local compute. You'd be shocked how many servers are on a cruise ship for one example among many.
skywhopper 3y ago
Your business model is not the only one in existence.

gigatexal 3y ago

Anyone know specs or prices?

steveklabnik 3y ago
Specs are here: https://oxide.computer/product/specifications https://oxide.computer/product/specifications Prices are here: https://oxide.computer/sales https://oxide.computer/sales ;)
- sorenbs 3y ago
  I know you are half joking, but it would really be helpful to have ball-park pricing available. Are we talking Sun-level markups here, or how should we think about it? Given the enterprise sales contact form, I'm thinking yes, but I'd love to know for sure.
  - steveklabnik 3y ago
    > how should we think about it? I am not in sales and so I hesitate to speak on it in case I am incorrect, but the way that I personally think about it is that it is true that it is not an inexpensive product: there's a LOT of computer here. But the goal is to be competitively priced.
  - vhodges 3y ago
    The last time (one of them) Oxide hit HN there were some ballpark estimates based on the CPUs in use, switches etc. Someone else said 500K and up. I wish there was a 4U version (10-25K but I don't think that they could come close to that price point - regardless even that is out of reach for me to ever get to play on one :-/ )
    - glandium 3y ago
      I guess you're thinking 4U blade enclosures? That would certainly be interesting.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 3y ago

Awesome. This would be especially useful in science but the lack of GPUs is a non-starter. :(

goldinfra 3y ago

Coupling vs Decoupling is not some one-sided thing. It's a major trade-off. One of the most obvious examples of the problem with this approach is that they're shipping previous generation servers on Day 1. One can easily buy current generation AMD servers from a number of vendors. They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors that are forced to compete head-to-head for a specific role (server vendor, switch vendor, etc). Their coupling approach will most likely leave them perpetually behind and more expensive. But there are advantages too. Their stuff should be simpler to use and require less in-house expertise to operate well. This is probably a reasonable trade-off for government agencies and the like, but will probably never be ideal for more savvy customers. And I don't know how truly open source their work is but if it's truly open source, they'll most likely find themselves turned into a software company with an open core model. Other vendors that are already at scale can almost certainly assemble hardware better than they can.

lostdog 3y ago
If they standardize and open the server shape and plug interface then it gets really cool. Then I could go design a GPU server myself and add it to their rack. The rack is no longer a hyperconverged single-user proprietary setup and becomes something that can be extended and repurposed.
- foobarian 3y ago
  "The Framework Cloud"
dangoor 3y ago
> They will also likely charge a significant premium over decoupled vendors It seems like they're trying to hit a middle ground between cloud vendors and fully decoupled server equipment companies. Using Oxide is likely cheaper over the life of the hardware than using a cloud vendor. A company who already has in-house expertise on running racks of systems may be less the target market here than people who want to do cloud computing but under their own control.
- 3y ago

pxc 3y ago

> Ironically this looks like the realization of Richard Stallman's dream where users can help each other if something doesn't work. How is it ironic?

Upvoter33 3y ago

I don't see it as a big deal - rather, I see it as a huge amount of venture cap spent on some very bright people to build something no one really wants, or, at best, is niche. Also, it has little to do with the cloud; it is yet another hyperconverged infra. Weirdly, it is attached to something very few people want: Solaris. This relates to the people behind it who still can't figure out why Linux won and Solaris didn't.

sanderjd 3y ago
> something no one really wants, or, at best, is niche Could be! Seems too early to tell though, and remains to be seen whether it pencils. Which is the whole idea of starting a new venture, no?
Voultapher 3y ago
Right, who wants or benefits from open source firmware anyway. Also there are many situations where renting, for example a flat makes a lot of sense. And there are many situations where the financials and or enabled options of owning something make a lot of sense. Right now, the kind of experience you get with AWS and co. can only be rented, not bought. Some people want to buy houses instead of renting them.
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  >Right, who wants or benefits from open source firmware anyway. Their competition has open source firmware as well: https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/enabling-open-embedded-systems-management-on-poweredge-servers/ https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/enabling-open-embedded-syste...
  - bcantrill 3y ago
    So OpenBMC is fine (happy for them!), but having open firmware is much deeper and broader than that: yes, it's the service processor (in contrast to the BMC which is a closed part on Dell machines) -- but it's also the root-of-trust and (especially) the host CPU itself. We at Oxide have open source software from first instruction out of the AMD PSP; I elaborated more on our approach in my OSFC 2022 talk.[0] [0] https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-not-to-open-it-the-need-for-holistic-systems/ https://www.osfc.io/2022/talks/i-have-come-to-bury-the-bios-...

ChuckMcM 3y ago

Its a huge deal. I'm biased though because my own takes on how things should evolve were very similar. I was however completely unsuccessful in getting those ideas into production! And that, that is a huge deal. Through out my career it has been interesting to meet people with great ideas and then they are unable to get them into production, and when the idea does come into production everyone feels like "Wow, this is so obvious why didn't we do it sooner?" and some folks are banging their head against the wall :-). One of the more interesting discussions I had during my tenure at Google was about the "size" of the unit of clusters. If you toured Google you got the whole "millions of cheap replaceable computers" mantra. Sitting in Building 42 was a "rack" which had cheap PC motherboards on "pizza dishes" without all that superfluous sheet metal. Bunches of these in a rack and a festoon of network cables. What are the "first class" elements of these machines? Compute? Networking? Storage? Did you replace components? Or a whole "pizza slice" (which Google called an 'index' at the time). Really a great systems analysis problem. FWIW I'm more of a "chunk" guy (which is the direction 0xide went) and less of a "cluster" guy (which is the way Google organized their infrastructure). A lot of people associated with 0xide are folks I worked with at Sun in the early days and during that period the first hints of "beowulf" clusters vs "super computers", was memory one thing (UMA) or did it vary from place to place (NUMA). I have a paper I wrote from that time about "compute viscosity" where the effective compute rate (which at the time largely focused on transactional databases) scaled up with resource (more memory more transactions/sec for example) and scaled down with viscosity (higher latencies to get to state meant fewer transactions/sec) Sun was invested heavily in the TPC-C benchmarks at the time but they were just one load pattern one could optimize for. These guys have capitalized on all that history and it is fucking amazing! I just hope they don't get killed by acquisition[1]. [1] KbA is a technique where people who are invested in the status quo and have resources available use those resources to force the investors in a disruptive technology to sell to them and then they quietly bury the disruptive technology.

mgh95 3y ago
Can you clarify a bit on what you mean by "chunk" guy? Are you alluding to the ability to distribute work by an isolation mechanism such as cgroups vs machine a-la borg/google?

ThinkBeat 3y ago

IBM invented this a long time ago. Mainframes. >They sell servers, but as a finished product. Not as a cobbled together mess of third party stuff where the vendor keeps shrugging if there is an integration >problem. They integrated it.

zemo 3y ago

> Ironically this looks like the realization of Richard Stallman's dream where users can help each other if something doesn't work. that's only true if you think that "users" means "people who operate cloud computers", which is about as far from understanding what Stallman is talking about as is possible. Someone who makes SaaS and runs it on an Oxide computer is no less of a rentier capitalist than someone who makes SaaS and runs it on AWS.