4 ms·

> Have there? But not you I take it? I have a variety of customers running a variety of different x86_64 gear. From an up-time perspective, there has been lo

> Have there? But not you I take it? I have a variety of customers running a variety of different x86_64 gear. From an up-time perspective, there has been low correlation between price and reliability. If we're talking non-x86_64 systems--like zSeries or industrial control systems--then the price and the reliability are correlated, but that is not an x86_64 market, and probably never will be. > Bryan worked at joyant and ran a public cloud on dell and supermicro gear. And it seems they had plenty of problems. Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". The supermicros I mentioned were "good enough". Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear, expecting Sun-tier SLAs. They'd need Sun-tier hardware to accomplish that, but the Sun that made that kind of gear is dead, just like Joyent. They are both dead for a reason: worse is better. Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days (not wasting money on brands, SLAs, and fancy cases[0]). > Additional evidence comes from the cloud providers themselves. Why did all of them develop their own stuff if operations with that stuff is so problem free? Let's say there are three tiers of users 1) small-fries who spin up a few AWS images, 2) businesses who've grown to the point where public cloud is no longer economical, but not invested enough in computing to justify developing their own hardware, and 3) FAANG, who have so much money and so much need that it would be absolutely stupid for them not to develop their own hardware. At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_Production_Server.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Google%E2%80%99s_First_...

panick21_ 3y ago
> Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". What good enough is depends. Sure maybe if you built new processors and everything it would be even better. But using the same processor at the core as typical servers, and just sounding it with a slightly different architecture can improve things. That's exactly what google does too. > Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. > dead, just like Joyent Joyent was bought, it didn't go bust and the actual infrastructure is still running. > Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days Again, that's exactly what I am saying. Why do you think google stopped doing that? > At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. Except if you actually listen to interviews of the people who did those innovations at Google and co, they stopped working with the traditional vendors and did costume stuff, it was because they couldn't get the quality out of the traditional architecture. That is also why google invested in coreboot, linuxboot and are running their internal infrastructure on things like NERF firmware, instead of the standard you get from the typical vendors. > #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. Have you done an actual detailed comparison with real price quotes compared to a traditional system plus all the software and setup and so on? Because if you haven't its not worth much as an opinion.
- hello_computer 3y ago
  > Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. The problem wasn't Solaris. The problem wasn't x86. The problem was Cantrill & Co.'s expectations. The industry began moving to availability in software instead of hardware back in the early 2000s. Premium iron vendors fell on hard times because of this. They had a premium product with a premium price, but demand for it dried-up. Cantrill came from one of those companies, and is right to think commodity x86 hardware is crap in comparison, but it doesn't matter for the mid-tier and below markets anymore. They've already cleared this obstacle. > That is also why google... What Google does is irrelevant to this discussion. That is not 0xide's market. Businesses seriously competing in the compute space are going to vertically integrate as much as possible--not just motherboards and lights-out management, but all the way down to the CPU: Google's Cypress & Maple, AWS's Graviton, Apple's M1. Switching to 0xide kit is not vertical integration.
  - bcantrill 3y ago
    I have heard a lot of whoppers in my time, but hearing that my expectations are too high might be a first!
    - hello_computer 3y ago
      Just going off what fanboy wrote. If you went into the business of running foreign workloads on commodity x86 hardware expecting anything more than pain and sadness, your expectations were too high.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        I am so confused by your position. It seems to be that you believe x86 PC hardware is garbage, but that for most companies garbage is just perfectly fine and the only people who shouldn't use garbage are companies that can make their own CPU? And anybody that tries to improve the status-quo shouldn't even try. That's quite a line of argument.

panick21_ 3y ago

> Never called it perfect. I wrote "worse is better"--the "best" losing out to the "good enough". What good enough is depends. Sure maybe if you built new processors and everything it would be even better. But using the same processor at the core as typical servers, and just sounding it with a slightly different architecture can improve things. That's exactly what google does too. > Of course Cantrill et. al. had problems with them, since they were running Solaris/Indiana on x86_64 gear Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. > dead, just like Joyent Joyent was bought, it didn't go bust and the actual infrastructure is still running. > Google also used bare-bones discount servers in their early days Again, that's exactly what I am saying. Why do you think google stopped doing that? > At FAANG-scale it's no longer just about cost or quality; it's about being in control of your own business. Except if you actually listen to interviews of the people who did those innovations at Google and co, they stopped working with the traditional vendors and did costume stuff, it was because they couldn't get the quality out of the traditional architecture. That is also why google invested in coreboot, linuxboot and are running their internal infrastructure on things like NERF firmware, instead of the standard you get from the typical vendors. > #2 would seem to be 0xide's target market, but as someone who inhabits that space, I am unimpressed. Have you done an actual detailed comparison with real price quotes compared to a traditional system plus all the software and setup and so on? Because if you haven't its not worth much as an opinion.

hello_computer 3y ago
> Ah the old 'its the os fault' excuse. Classic. The problem wasn't Solaris. The problem wasn't x86. The problem was Cantrill & Co.'s expectations. The industry began moving to availability in software instead of hardware back in the early 2000s. Premium iron vendors fell on hard times because of this. They had a premium product with a premium price, but demand for it dried-up. Cantrill came from one of those companies, and is right to think commodity x86 hardware is crap in comparison, but it doesn't matter for the mid-tier and below markets anymore. They've already cleared this obstacle. > That is also why google... What Google does is irrelevant to this discussion. That is not 0xide's market. Businesses seriously competing in the compute space are going to vertically integrate as much as possible--not just motherboards and lights-out management, but all the way down to the CPU: Google's Cypress & Maple, AWS's Graviton, Apple's M1. Switching to 0xide kit is not vertical integration.
- bcantrill 3y ago
  I have heard a lot of whoppers in my time, but hearing that my expectations are too high might be a first!
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    Just going off what fanboy wrote. If you went into the business of running foreign workloads on commodity x86 hardware expecting anything more than pain and sadness, your expectations were too high.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      I am so confused by your position. It seems to be that you believe x86 PC hardware is garbage, but that for most companies garbage is just perfectly fine and the only people who shouldn't use garbage are companies that can make their own CPU? And anybody that tries to improve the status-quo shouldn't even try. That's quite a line of argument.