zlacker

>>zdw+(OP)
Something to note is that there are special BMC-less motherboards that are made for organisations like the NSA.

That should tell you everything you need to know about the security risks involved.

>>jiggaw+BMb
And of course there's oxide.computer making motherboards with full control of the entire hardware stack running open source software specifically for customers like the Idaho National Laboratory.

>>tinco+sOb
Oxide’s efforts are commendable, but I don’t know what compliance regime their customer adheres to.

In other words, it’s a neat feature, but maybe not one many customers actually request.

>>selkin+H4c
As far as I can tell it's one of their most significant features, and certainly one of its most capital intensive. And I don't know how many startups land institutions like INL as their launching customer, and enough other big enterprise leads to warrant their follow up investment.

If you remove that component from their value prop, they're not that much different from Dell.

>>tinco+Xsc
Just a quick point of clarification that while our boot architecture is very important (e.g., a service processor in lieu of a BMC, the elimination of UEFI entirely, etc.), we are quite a bit different from Dell beyond that. There are certainly many hardware-level differentiators (e.g. DC busbar-based design, blindmated networking, built-in switch, etc.) but the big differentiator is really what these things allow: entirely integrated software. The Oxide rack comes with all of the software to run elastic infrastructure (that is, the distributed system that comprises the control plane), including switch software, storage software, etc. And then (critically!) the capacity to update all of this.[0]

All of it is a far cry from the offerings of Dell/HPE/Supermicro, which rely on others to provide the software that turns the hardware into real infrastructure.

[0] https://oxide.computer/blog/systems-software-in-the-large