3 ms·

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 o

by 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
[deleted]
yencabulator 3y ago
Same is true of Oxide, it'll be up to actual experience to see how well it works. Oxide seems to have written their own distributed block storage system (https://github.com/oxidecomputer/crucible https://github.com/oxidecomputer/crucible), have their own firmware, kernel and hypervisor forks, etc -- when any of that breaks, good luck!
- jjav 3y ago
  > Oxide seems to have written their own ... > when any of that breaks, good luck! The premise is that you don't need luck, you can call Oxide. As you said, they wrote all of it, so they own all the interaction so they can diagnose all of it. When I call Dell with a problem between my OS filesystem and the bus and the hardware RAID, there's at least three vendors involved there so Dell doesn't actually employ anyone that knows all of it so they can't fix it. Sure, Oxide now needs to deliver on that support promise but at least they are uniquely positioned to be able to do it.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key. The rest comes down to execution. Sure, we all have high hopes for Oxide. Sure, we all hate established players like Dell.
    - jjav 3y ago
      > That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key. Just about any company will sell your company a support contract. The more interesting question is, can they back it up with action when push comes to shove? I suspect most people have plenty of stories of opening support tickets with big name vendors that never get resolved. And through the grapevine you find out that they won't fix it because they can't fix it. They might not even have access to the source code or anyone on staff who has a clue about it because it came from who knows where. Sales is happy to sell you the support contract but it doesn't mean your problems can be fixed. BTDT. From listening to the Oxide podcasts, my impression is that Oxide actually can technically fix anything in the stack they sell, which would make them vastly different from Dell et.al.
      - yencabulator 3y ago
        Skill-wise, yes for sure (except perhaps for storage -- I haven't heard them talk about that much). Bandwidth wise, though? I used to work for a company targeting Fortune 500s. At that level of spend, when a client had a problem, somebody got on a plane. Only a fraction of those problems escalated all the way to R&D, which is where Oxide skills are. That's where VMWare etc are hard to beat.

by growse 3y ago

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

[deleted]

yencabulator 3y ago

Same is true of Oxide, it'll be up to actual experience to see how well it works. Oxide seems to have written their own distributed block storage system (https://github.com/oxidecomputer/crucible https://github.com/oxidecomputer/crucible), have their own firmware, kernel and hypervisor forks, etc -- when any of that breaks, good luck!

jjav 3y ago
> Oxide seems to have written their own ... > when any of that breaks, good luck! The premise is that you don't need luck, you can call Oxide. As you said, they wrote all of it, so they own all the interaction so they can diagnose all of it. When I call Dell with a problem between my OS filesystem and the bus and the hardware RAID, there's at least three vendors involved there so Dell doesn't actually employ anyone that knows all of it so they can't fix it. Sure, Oxide now needs to deliver on that support promise but at least they are uniquely positioned to be able to do it.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key. The rest comes down to execution. Sure, we all have high hopes for Oxide. Sure, we all hate established players like Dell.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > That's the same premise as with all "turn-key" solutions. If it didn't come with software support, it wasn't really turn-key. Just about any company will sell your company a support contract. The more interesting question is, can they back it up with action when push comes to shove? I suspect most people have plenty of stories of opening support tickets with big name vendors that never get resolved. And through the grapevine you find out that they won't fix it because they can't fix it. They might not even have access to the source code or anyone on staff who has a clue about it because it came from who knows where. Sales is happy to sell you the support contract but it doesn't mean your problems can be fixed. BTDT. From listening to the Oxide podcasts, my impression is that Oxide actually can technically fix anything in the stack they sell, which would make them vastly different from Dell et.al.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      Skill-wise, yes for sure (except perhaps for storage -- I haven't heard them talk about that much). Bandwidth wise, though? I used to work for a company targeting Fortune 500s. At that level of spend, when a client had a problem, somebody got on a plane. Only a fraction of those problems escalated all the way to R&D, which is where Oxide skills are. That's where VMWare etc are hard to beat.