# Shipping the first Oxide rack: Your questions answered!

- Show: [Oxide and Friends](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends)
- Published: 2023-07-04
- Length: 2h 02m
- Episode: 19
- Page: https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered
- Listen: https://share.transistor.fm/s/353e8a06

## Summary

Oxide founders Bryan Cantrill and Steve Tuck, joined by Adam Klabnik, discuss the shipping of their first commercial rack-scale computer, explaining that the product is an on-premises cloud infrastructure solution designed to offer hyperscaler-level elasticity without the public cloud. They address skepticism about the business model by highlighting the growing need for data sovereignty, latency reduction, and cost efficiency for large enterprises, arguing that owning infrastructure makes economic sense at scale. The founders detail the technical necessity of building custom hardware and firmware together to solve power efficiency, cooling, and support issues inherent in commodity server stacks, while also defending their choice of Illumos and their decision to build a robust, open-source hypervisor rather than relying on VMware or Firecracker.

## Chapters

- [0:00](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=0) Introduction: First Rack Shipped and Community Support
- [6:03](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=363) Product Definition: Rack-Scale On-Premises Cloud
- [13:19](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=799) Business Value: Why Own Infrastructure Instead of Renting
- [19:28](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=1168) Hardware Integration: Why Commodity Hardware Fails at Scale
- [28:26](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=1706) Power Efficiency and Rack-Level Design
- [35:06](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=2106) Integrated Hardware/Software Model: Apple, Sun, and AS/400
- [42:43](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=2563) Hypervisor Choice: SmartOS vs. VMware and Firecracker
- [56:03](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=3363) Deployment Experience: From Rack to API in Hours
- [1:02:05](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=3725) Customer Ownership, Support, and Standalone Operation
- [1:11:21](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=4281) Future Roadmap: Scaling Down, GPUs, and Genoa CPUs
- [1:28:37](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=5317) Why Illumos: DTrace, ZFS, and Control Over Fate
- [1:46:34](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered#t=6394) Hardest Challenges: Funding Paralysis and SVB Crisis

## Topics

- [Starting a product company](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/starting-a-company)
- [Mechanical engineering](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/mechanical-engineering)
- [Embedded firmware](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/embedded-firmware)
- [Direct-to-consumer & e-commerce](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/direct-to-consumer)
- [Microcontrollers & dev platforms](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/microcontrollers-and-platforms)
- [Scaling production](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/topic/scaling-production)

## Most relevant to

early-stage companies

## Mentioned

- Oxide (company)
- Bryan Cantrill (other)
- Steve Tuck (other)
- Adam Klabnik (other)
- AMD (company)
- NVIDIA (company)
- VMware (company)
- Firecracker (product)
- Illumos (other)
- DTrace (tool)
- ZFS (other)
- SmartOS (product)
- Joyent (company)
- Sun Microsystems (company)
- Apple (company)
- AS/400 (product)
- Benchmark Electronics (company)
- MotivAir (company)
- Silicon Valley Bank (company)

## Related episodes from other shows

- [342: That Girl's Brain](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/embedded-fm/2020-08-27-342-that-girls-brain) (Embedded.fm)
- [EP 136: WE DON'T HAVE THE POWER!](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-circuit/2025-10-06-ep-136-we-dont-have-the-power) (The Circuit)
- [An Interview with Rick Altherr](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-amp-hour/2017-08-29-an-interview-with-rick-altherr) (The Amp Hour)
- [Ep. 27 | Two Google Senior VPs of Engineering: From Shipping Containers to Today's Data Centers](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/moores-lobby/2021-06-22-ep-27-two-google-senior-vps-of-engineering-from-shipping-containers-to-todays-da) (Moore's Lobby)
- [An Interview with Jon Oxer - Innoxious Implant Innovator](https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/the-amp-hour/2012-11-27-an-interview-with-jon-oxer-innoxious-implant-innovator) (The Amp Hour)

## Citing this page

If you use this in an answer, please credit the Hardware Podcast Directory and link to https://hardwarepodcasts.com/podcast/oxide-and-friends/2023-07-04-shipping-the-first-oxide-rack-your-questions-answered. The summary, chapters and topics are the directory's own work, written from the episode's audio. The episode itself, its title and its audio belong to Oxide and Friends.