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  • Hacker News
  • How are folks managing stateful workloads like databases on Oxide?
    by redwood
  • I cover this a bit in the post. Today they are running something like Longhorn backed by Oxide storage. When we release our CSI plugin they can use that instead.
    by sudomateo
  • I am wondering when would you use kubernetes on oxide vs running kubernetes with kubevirt on baremetal?

    At first look, it feels like oxide is equivalent to proxmox or some virtualization tool, may be it uses qemu stuff underneath.

    Just curious.

    The reason I am asking this is that, we have lot onprem scenarios in our business. We are tightly coupled with k8s, to solve this we started building an internal project that is kubernetes API compatible [1] but runs containerd or WASM or our platform natively.

    Just curious how oxides work in this scenario

    [1] https://github.com/debarshibasak/superkube

    by bitlad
  • When oxide provide your metal?
    by e12e
  • Yeah me too. Like I kinda compare oxide to coreweave and coreweave is built on top of k8s afaik. I'm wondering what the underlying tech oxide leans on. If I was doing this I would be using talos and k8s on baremetal and building on top of that. Container first rather than VM first seems like a big advantage imo. Most workloads will be containers.
    by bakies
  • Oxide is shipping the baremetal server as well, with integrated hypervisor - so running kubernetes with kubevirt on it makes less sense than integrating with the host hypervisor
    by p_l
  • You would use Oxide if you hate Dell/HPE/Lenovo/Supermicro. Also most people won't run k8s on bare metal because they want to dynamically provision a bunch of clusters.
    by wmf
  • Good question. We use our own hypervisor[0] that's not KVM/QEMU. We don't have nested virtualization today so we don't follow the KubeVirt model, though we are discussing what CRDs like OxideInstance would look like for those that want to operate solely in Kubernetes manifests.

    The core primitive on Oxide is the instance (virtual machine). We could support some container primitive, but that's a larger product direction discussion. Our host OS is Helios (Illumos) so there are details to iron out there regarding what abstractions we would build and expose to the users. Not impossible but not something we're currently pursuing either given that we have other immediate product asks.

    If you're at a scale where compute density, power efficiency, security, and rack-level API management matters then that's where Oxide makes sense for you.

    [0] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/propolis

    by sudomateo
  • So you’d be attaching a new volume to the running worker VM for each PVC? This seems a little odd to me. Could you attach a single large volume, and do path-based provisioning on that?
    by wolttam
  • Does seem like that could be an issue for RWX PVCs, unless those volumes can be mounted to multiple nodes. Depending on the workload, you might be better off using NFS.
    by itintheory
  • > So you’d be attaching a new volume to the running worker VM for each PVC?

    That's what we prototyped before local disk was released and before we started disk hot-plug work.

    > Could you attach a single large volume, and do path-based provisioning on that?

    Possibly. We'd still want disk hot-plug first. Otherwise, customers would have to create their cluster in a certain shape before using PVCs.

    by sudomateo
  • Bug report I guess, but the pages top navigation seems completely inoperable to me on my iPad. Clicking with my finger does not work. Clicking with my Apple Pencil does not work. Any sort of hover state that might be there does not work (with the pencil)
    by donatj
  • Reported internally. Thank you!
    by sudomateo
  • Kubernetes is where Oxide, from my armchair, doesn't yet quite match the public cloud.

    On AWS EKS Fargate, each pod runs in its own dedicated VM. With Oxide each k8s node is a VM, so you still need something like Talos.

    On networking it looks like it is getting closer. Where you can have external subnet give pod routed IPs without overlay. But the gap, as marked by the article, is also the load balancing.

    It would be nice if Kubernetes were a native feature out-of-the-box. Also integrated within the existing user/access control.

    by whazor
  • We're discussing what "native Kubernetes" looks like on Oxide in the limit. There's a bunch to build, some of which is blocked on product gaps. We'll get there though!

    I don't necessarily want to match the public cloud experience if there's an opportunity for Oxide to exceed the public cloud experience. Eliminating the overlay is a good example of this. We have customers using external subnets to eliminate the overlay but we haven't integrated that into our controllers yet.

    by sudomateo
  • Love to see the CAPOx provider and buy in to Cluster API
    by moondev
  • Yeah me too, unfortunately I cant justify huge 100K USD servers so ill continue with cluster api provider hetzner and metal3. The whole CAPI ecosystem is quite cool.
    by preisschild
  • Disclaimer: I'm totally biased here.

    I talked with a colleague from Oxide in 2024 about your Kubernetes story and he said back then "not yet but soon-ish". Seems like soon-ish is now :)

    We said we'd talk again when that happens but he's since left Oxide. If you (or well...your customers) are interested in a Kubernetes native data platform 100% open source we'd be very happy to talk about how that could work easily. As it's "just" Kubernetes it should be trivial but we'd be happy to test and add you to our list: https://docs.stackable.tech/home/stable/kubernetes/#supporte...

    The offer stands. If you're interested, my mail is in my HN profile. https://stackable.tech

    by lars_francke
  • Great post.

    ClusterAPI never got the love that it should. I spent a good amount of time on it at VMware, as Tanzu heavily leverages it for cluster deployment (mostly CAP-A and CAP-V). It's basically kubeadm + the spirit of Terraform, Kubernetes controller edition. There's lots of great enterprise-ready options for centralized k8s cluster fleet management these days, but it works really well for folks that are all-in on GitOps and such.

    by nunez
  • Thank you so much! There are certainly a plethora of options for Kubernetes cluster management. We see Cluster API as a vendor-agnostic way for us and our customers. Perhaps one day we'll more tightly integrate Kubernetes and the Oxide control plane, but gotta start somewhere.
    by sudomateo
  • I would absolutely kill for them to open source their documentation system.
    by overflowy
  • Are you referring to our RFD system?[0][1] Because if so, good news![2]

    [0] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/0001

    [1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/rfds-the-ba...

    [2] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/rfd-site

    by bcantrill
  • I have seldom wanted anything as much as I want an Oxide rack at home. Maybe in 40 years we'll start to see the first ones show up in surplus auctions...
    by pianoben
  • fwiw, I am very satisfied with talos and k8s at home.
    by bakies
  • Every single Oxide article has comments about people wanting one at home.

    A great example of completely misdirected marketing and/or engineering. Oxide should have developed home microcomputers, and they would have sold like cupcakes, with their ASCII art marketing. Instead they do million dollar "mainframes" that no one (except VCs) wants to buy.

    by lkasjdas
  • You can run the control plane at home. I have a video on how to do it. Until we make a smaller footprint that's the only way you'd get Oxide at home.
    by sudomateo
  • I'm interested to see how the `oxide-cloud-controller-manager` is being built for "modern" Kubernetes and if it leads to any signify difference compared to CCMs that originated in-tree. Given the way Oxide engineer their solutions this could be really interesting.

    FYI I've got `karpenter-provider-oxide` on my bingo card...

    by stevehipwell
  • Yes this would be great addition! Also it would be awesome to see proper load balancer, ingress controller with `gateway api` and a `api gateway` (two separate things).

    I’m not an oxide customer, just a fan. I have lots of ideas around how something like this should look, being disappointed with the complexity and also shortcomings of products on the market for this stuff, both in the cloud and on prem.

    by thegagne
  • There are few paths we can take here. The CCM's primary responsibility is to implement the cloudprovider.Interface[0] which has node, route, and service controllers. However, the CCM can run arbitrary named controllers as well, giving us a fun extension point for the future. The in-tree CCMs are being phased out in favor of out-of-tree CCMs. The AWS Cloud Provider[1] is a good example of what that's starting to look like.

    My colleague demo'd Karpeneter internally. We haven't committed releasing it yet but we're discussing it.

    [0] https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider/blob/master/clo...

    [1] https://github.com/kubernetes/cloud-provider-aws

    by sudomateo