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> 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 indu

> 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.
    - hello_computer 3y ago
      > I am so confused by your position If you read with a little less haste and hostility, and a little more humility--rather than just jumping in and getting personal, you will see that I am being perfectly clear. I am saying that this battle already played-out, 15-20 years ago. The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries, which 0xide is in no position to compete with. The people who are competing against Azure and AWS have to make their own hardware--partly to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, partly because they'd end up sharecropping for their vendor if they did otherwise. The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. An okay server that I can swap-out with any other vendor is an asset. A fantastic server, with custom components & bespoke tooling, that I can only get from one supplier, is a liability. All of their open sourcing makes no difference if it only runs on their equipment.
      - linksnapzz 3y ago
        > The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries >"People who need primo hardware" ...can buy a mainframe. That is quite the take. >The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. An okay server that I can swap-out with any other vendor is an asset. Setting aside the trouble one has already incurred with a system that needs to be swapped out; switching vendors (even of erstwhile "commodity" systems)isn't a neat process in any medium-to-large organization. There's purchasing, contracts for maintenance, depreciation, validation by your DC people that power and cooling for the new box is good... And...in the end, if you your hardware is truly commodity, swapping out for another vendor is not going to yield a better outcome in the long term. You'll be riding the crap-hardware merry-go-round all over again, just on a different horse. Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a better server.
      - panick21_ 3y ago
        > If you read with a little less haste and hostility, and a little more humility--rather than just jumping in and getting personal, you will see that I am being perfectly clear. You literally called me a 'fanboy' but I am somehow I am hostile. I didn't say anything hostile in the slightest. You even doubled down on your position. If you were ever gone be google or a mainframe you would have done it already, so be happy with the garbage provided. That literally your argument. > I am saying that this battle already played-out, 15-20 years ago. Markets change over time. Its never set in stone. The industry is continuing to grow, computing needs increase for all companies and many, many billions get spend each year on new servers. The main reason the 'fancy' hardware like Sun and friends failed, was because of the processor on the hardware side, and because of open source linux on the software side. The costume motherboards that cost slightly more and firmware weren't actually the real problem. Also, 20 years ago was before virtualization and scripted setup were universal, things were just totally different. Those decisions should effect what the right decisions are today. > The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries Again, the market is growing, any money companies who might have needed 10 computers in the past now need 100. And those that needed 100, no need 1000. And so on. There is a gigantic gap between a mainframe and your standard Dell PC Server, there is lots of space between those things. > The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. And yet a huge amount isn't actually this perfect interchangeable commodity. Sure you can get any basic OS to boot and there is some standards, but the situation isn't close to actually being a true commodity. It also depends on where you expect interchangeability. If you define much of your infrastructure with terraform scripts and a few services to monitor everything, then that's the interchangeability layer you actually care about. Sure if you buy a bunch of Oxide servers, you can just rip one out and replace with the server from some other vendor. You have to rip out the whole rack and replace it with some other rack. But whatever that something else is, its just gone be another target for your terraform scripts that gets monitored in a comparable way (against hat part isn't neatly standardized anyway). Industry 'standards' like RedFish are not close to providing that even for pretty low level stuff. And once you want to do more complex things there are even less standards. If you operate a number of VxRail Dell Rack, its not that easy to just rip it out and replace it with some rack of HP machines. Again, this is specially true if you use anything but the most basic features, because very quickly you are in proprietary non-standard software hell. Guess what, Dell doesn't actually want their racks to be perfectly easily replaceable. And if you have an issue that your Dell rack and your HP rack behave inconsistently, guess who isn't gone care about that, Dell and HP. And guess what, neither of their implementation is open source either so good luck with that. There is a reason people stick to a low number of vendors.

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.
  - hello_computer 3y ago
    > I am so confused by your position If you read with a little less haste and hostility, and a little more humility--rather than just jumping in and getting personal, you will see that I am being perfectly clear. I am saying that this battle already played-out, 15-20 years ago. The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries, which 0xide is in no position to compete with. The people who are competing against Azure and AWS have to make their own hardware--partly to distinguish themselves in the marketplace, partly because they'd end up sharecropping for their vendor if they did otherwise. The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. An okay server that I can swap-out with any other vendor is an asset. A fantastic server, with custom components & bespoke tooling, that I can only get from one supplier, is a liability. All of their open sourcing makes no difference if it only runs on their equipment.
    - linksnapzz 3y ago
      > The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries >"People who need primo hardware" ...can buy a mainframe. That is quite the take. >The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. An okay server that I can swap-out with any other vendor is an asset. Setting aside the trouble one has already incurred with a system that needs to be swapped out; switching vendors (even of erstwhile "commodity" systems)isn't a neat process in any medium-to-large organization. There's purchasing, contracts for maintenance, depreciation, validation by your DC people that power and cooling for the new box is good... And...in the end, if you your hardware is truly commodity, swapping out for another vendor is not going to yield a better outcome in the long term. You'll be riding the crap-hardware merry-go-round all over again, just on a different horse. Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a better server.
    - panick21_ 3y ago
      > If you read with a little less haste and hostility, and a little more humility--rather than just jumping in and getting personal, you will see that I am being perfectly clear. You literally called me a 'fanboy' but I am somehow I am hostile. I didn't say anything hostile in the slightest. You even doubled down on your position. If you were ever gone be google or a mainframe you would have done it already, so be happy with the garbage provided. That literally your argument. > I am saying that this battle already played-out, 15-20 years ago. Markets change over time. Its never set in stone. The industry is continuing to grow, computing needs increase for all companies and many, many billions get spend each year on new servers. The main reason the 'fancy' hardware like Sun and friends failed, was because of the processor on the hardware side, and because of open source linux on the software side. The costume motherboards that cost slightly more and firmware weren't actually the real problem. Also, 20 years ago was before virtualization and scripted setup were universal, things were just totally different. Those decisions should effect what the right decisions are today. > The people who need primo hardware already have things like zseries Again, the market is growing, any money companies who might have needed 10 computers in the past now need 100. And those that needed 100, no need 1000. And so on. There is a gigantic gap between a mainframe and your standard Dell PC Server, there is lots of space between those things. > The rest is in the commodity band, where interchangeability is key. And yet a huge amount isn't actually this perfect interchangeable commodity. Sure you can get any basic OS to boot and there is some standards, but the situation isn't close to actually being a true commodity. It also depends on where you expect interchangeability. If you define much of your infrastructure with terraform scripts and a few services to monitor everything, then that's the interchangeability layer you actually care about. Sure if you buy a bunch of Oxide servers, you can just rip one out and replace with the server from some other vendor. You have to rip out the whole rack and replace it with some other rack. But whatever that something else is, its just gone be another target for your terraform scripts that gets monitored in a comparable way (against hat part isn't neatly standardized anyway). Industry 'standards' like RedFish are not close to providing that even for pretty low level stuff. And once you want to do more complex things there are even less standards. If you operate a number of VxRail Dell Rack, its not that easy to just rip it out and replace it with some rack of HP machines. Again, this is specially true if you use anything but the most basic features, because very quickly you are in proprietary non-standard software hell. Guess what, Dell doesn't actually want their racks to be perfectly easily replaceable. And if you have an issue that your Dell rack and your HP rack behave inconsistently, guess who isn't gone care about that, Dell and HP. And guess what, neither of their implementation is open source either so good luck with that. There is a reason people stick to a low number of vendors.