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Well, you can buy your own hardware and set it up with OpenStack and use it as a private cloud. Companies like Canonical or Redhat make a lot of money by provid

Well, you can buy your own hardware and set it up with OpenStack and use it as a private cloud. Companies like Canonical or Redhat make a lot of money by providing software (mostly open source) to support exactly that use case. And Canonical played with a cluster-in-a-box all the way back in 2013-2014: https://www.zdnet.com/article/canonicals-cloud-in-a-box-under-the-hood/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/canonicals-cloud-in-a-box-unde... You could turn it into an OpenStack cloud in ~20 mins with an automated Juju OpenStack install.

jjav 3y ago
> Well, you can buy your own hardware and set it up with OpenStack and use it as a private cloud. Companies like Canonical or Redhat make a lot of money by providing software (mostly open source) to support exactly that use case. Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? If you haven't lived through this, the answer is: nobody. Everyone points fingers at the other 4 and ignore your calls. Back in the day you could buy a fully integrated system (from CPU to hardware to OS) from Sun or SGI or HP and you had a single company to answer all the calls, so it was much better. Today you can't really get this level of integration and support anymore. (Actually, you probably can from IBM, which is why they're still around. But I have no experience in the IBM universe.) This is why Oxide is so exciting to me. I hope I can be in a company that becomes a customer at some point.
- Always_Anon 3y ago
  >Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. With Oxide you're locked into what looks like a Solaris derivative OS running on the metal and you're only allowed to provision VMs which is a huge disadvantage. I run a fleet of over 30,000 nodes in three continents and the majority is Flatcar Linux running on bare metal. Also have a decent amount of RHEL running for specific apps. We can pick and choose our bare metal OS which is something you cannot do with Oxide. That's a tough pill to swallow.
  - wmf 3y ago
    Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it.
    - Always_Anon 3y ago
      >And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. With Oxide, you'd be lucky to get same day service.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - jjav 3y ago
        > Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. You're talking about replacement parts. Yes Dell is good about that. The discussion above is asking them to diagnose and fix a problem with the interaction of various hardware components (all of which come from third parties).
        Always_Anon 3y ago
        Oxide also has various hardware components from AMD, Intel, Samsung, etc. They are not manufacturing every component.
        mlindner 3y ago
        But they _are_ writing the firmware that runs most of them and need to understand those devices at a deep level in order to do that, unlike Dell. Dell slaps together hardware and firmware from other vendors with some high level software of their own on top. They don't do the low level firmware and thus don't understand the low level intricacies of their own systems.
- ahhfgsado6698 3y ago
  [dead]
- jeffrallen 3y ago
  > you had a single company to answer all the calls, so it was much better Huh, then why did Sun, Oracle, and Veritas have to set up a shared tech support center in San Jose? "Accelerated finger pointing", said a friend who had to do business with them.

jjav 3y ago

> Well, you can buy your own hardware and set it up with OpenStack and use it as a private cloud. Companies like Canonical or Redhat make a lot of money by providing software (mostly open source) to support exactly that use case. Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? If you haven't lived through this, the answer is: nobody. Everyone points fingers at the other 4 and ignore your calls. Back in the day you could buy a fully integrated system (from CPU to hardware to OS) from Sun or SGI or HP and you had a single company to answer all the calls, so it was much better. Today you can't really get this level of integration and support anymore. (Actually, you probably can from IBM, which is why they're still around. But I have no experience in the IBM universe.) This is why Oxide is so exciting to me. I hope I can be in a company that becomes a customer at some point.

Always_Anon 3y ago
>Sure you can, but then who will diagnose and fix your hardware/OS interaction problems when you have parts from five vendors in the mix? Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. With Oxide you're locked into what looks like a Solaris derivative OS running on the metal and you're only allowed to provision VMs which is a huge disadvantage. I run a fleet of over 30,000 nodes in three continents and the majority is Flatcar Linux running on bare metal. Also have a decent amount of RHEL running for specific apps. We can pick and choose our bare metal OS which is something you cannot do with Oxide. That's a tough pill to swallow.
- wmf 3y ago
  Dell is a single vendor that will diagnose and fix all of your hardware issues. And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it.
  - Always_Anon 3y ago
    >And you'll be down for weeks or months while they do it. Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. With Oxide, you'd be lucky to get same day service.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jjav 3y ago
      > Off by a few orders of magnitude. Dell on-site SLA with pre-purchased spares was about 6 hours. You're talking about replacement parts. Yes Dell is good about that. The discussion above is asking them to diagnose and fix a problem with the interaction of various hardware components (all of which come from third parties).
      - Always_Anon 3y ago
        Oxide also has various hardware components from AMD, Intel, Samsung, etc. They are not manufacturing every component.
        mlindner 3y ago
        But they _are_ writing the firmware that runs most of them and need to understand those devices at a deep level in order to do that, unlike Dell. Dell slaps together hardware and firmware from other vendors with some high level software of their own on top. They don't do the low level firmware and thus don't understand the low level intricacies of their own systems.
ahhfgsado6698 3y ago
[dead]
jeffrallen 3y ago
> you had a single company to answer all the calls, so it was much better Huh, then why did Sun, Oracle, and Veritas have to set up a shared tech support center in San Jose? "Accelerated finger pointing", said a friend who had to do business with them.