omicron

Before I joined Oxide I did a little fan-boying (as one does) and put together home lab components as best I could. You _could_ tie 3+ mini-PCs together and wrangle omicron into some semblance of working that way. But it would not be pretty. However! You absolutely can use non-simulated Omicron: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/main/docs/how-... You'll get a single node control plane that's mostly workable, and be able to spin up VMs all day with it. That's what I did. Additionally, if you want to play with microcontrollers you can install Hubris onto STM32H753ZI dev boards! I have one connected to my TrueNAS server over UART and USBTTY for sensors, power management, and console.

Their entire control plan is open source and you can run it on commodity hardware: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/main/docs/how-...

We have a number of TLA+ models at Oxide. Here's one: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/8b0886dbd02229...

If you prefer "real" names you can always look at the actual code that had a bug - here it is before the bug was fixed: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/a253f541a4a32a...

This RFD describes our distillation of a really gnarly issue that we hit in the Oxide control plane.[0] Not unlike our discovery of the async cancellation issue[1][2][3], this is larger than the issue itself -- and worse, the program that hits futurelock is correct from the programmer's point of view. Fortunately, the surface area here is smaller than that of async cancellation and the conditions required to hit it can be relatively easily mitigated. Still, this is a pretty deep issue -- and something that took some very seasoned Rust hands quite a while to find. [0] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/issues/9259 [1] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/397 [2] https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/rfd/400 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrv5Cy1R7r4

The server and switch hardware is designed in-house (from the PCBs on up), though we do source DRAM / SSDs / CPUs / ASICs from the usual vendors. The "secret sauce management layer" is available at https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron, released under the MPLv2 license. (I work at Oxide)

I don't want to scare you... but here's a function from a codebase at work. https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/blob/5fd1c3588a45ad... That's ninety lines of type constraints.

> On my work I make 1-15 commits a day. If I have to spend thought cycles on the commit message, that is time that goes from other productive endeavours. I make roughly that many commits a day as well. If something's easy to understand I'll put in a simple commit message (e.g. [1]), but I do put in the effort for more complicated ones. [1] https://github.com/nextest-rs/nextest/commit/efd194b2e1d8d61... [2] https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron/commit/b07a8f593325...

> I also wonder if internally Linux is used for development of the platform itself Developers at Oxide work on whatever platform they'd like, as long as they can do their work. I will say I am in the minority as a Windows user though, most are on some form of Unix. > so they can create "virtual" racks to dogfood the product without full blown physical racks. So one of the reasons why Rust is such an advantage for us is its strong cross-platform support: you can run a simulated version of the control plane on Mac, Linux, and Illumos, without a physical rack. The non-simulated version must run on Helios. [1] That said we do have a rack in the office (literally named dogfood) that employees can use for various things if they wish. 1: https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron?tab=readme-ov-file#...

> I think the question is how well they can do the management plane. Docs: * https://docs.oxide.computer/api/guides/responses See perhaps "This repo houses the work-in-progress Oxide Rack control plane." * https://github.com/oxidecomputer/omicron

When we started the company, we knew it would be a three year build -- and indeed, our first product is in the final stages of development (i.e. EMC/safety certification). We have been very transparent about our progress along the way[0][1][2][3][4][5][6][7] -- and our software is essentially all open source, so you can follow along there as well.[8][9][10] If you are asking "does anyone want a rack-scale computer?" the (short) answer is: yes, they do. The on-prem market has been woefully underserved -- and there are plenty of folks who are sick of Dell/HPE/VMware/Cisco, to say nothing of those who are public cloud borne and wondering if they should perhaps own some of their own compute rather than rent it all. [0] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/holistic-bo... [1] https://oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm/episodes/the-oxid