The history of servers, the cloud, and what’s next – with Oxide
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How have servers and the cloud evolved in the last 30 years, and what might be next? Bryan Cantrill was a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems during both the Dotcom Boom and the Dotcom Bust. Today, he is the co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer, where he works on modern server infrastructure.
In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, Bryan joins me to break down how modern computing infrastructure evolved. We discuss why the Dotcom Bust produced deeper innovation than the Boom, how constraints shape better systems, and what the rise of the cloud changed and did not change about building reliable infrastructure.
Our conversation covers early web infrastructure at Sun, the emergence of AWS, Kubernetes and cloud neutrality, and the tradeoffs between renting cloud space and building your own. We also touch on the complexity of server-side software updates, experimenting with AI, the limits of large language models, and how engineering organizations scale without losing their values.
If you want a systems-level perspective on computing that connects past cycles to today’s engineering decisions, this episode offers a rare long-range view.
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Timestamps
(00:00) Intro
(01:26) Computer science in the 1990s
(03:01) Sun and Cisco’s web dominance
(05:41) The Dotcom Boom
(10:26) From Boom to Bust
(15:32) The innovations of the Bust
(17:50) The open source shift
(22:00) Oracle moves into Sun’s orbit
(24:54) AWS dominance (2010–2014)
(28:15) How Kubernetes and cloud neutrality
(30:58) Custom infrastructure
(36:10) Renting the cloud vs. buying hardware
(45:28) Designing a computer from first principles
(50:02) Why everyone is paid the same salary at Oxide
(54:14) Oxide’s software stack
(58:33) The evolution of software updates
(1:02:55) How Oxide uses AI
(1:06:05) The limitations of LLMs
(1:11:44) AI use and experimentation at Oxide
(1:17:45) Oxide’s diverse teams
(1:22:44) Remote work at Oxide
(1:24:11) Scaling company values
(1:27:36) AI’s impact on the future of engineering
(1:31:04) Bryan’s advice for junior engineers
(1:34:01) Book recommendations
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• Startups on hard mode: Oxide. Part 1: Hardware
• Startups on hard mode: Oxide, Part 2: Software & Culture
• Three cloud providers, three outages: three different responses
• Inside Uber’s move to the Cloud
• Inside Agoda’s private Cloud
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Inside Oxide (Friends)
Bryan Cantrill and Steve Tuck, the co-founders of Oxide, are on the pod live (to tape) from the stage at OxCon. Jerod and I were invited to Oxide’s annual internal conference to meet the people and to hear the stories of what makes Oxide a truly special place to work right now. The best part was this on-stage discussion with Bryan and Steve. Enjoy!
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Featuring:
Bryan Cantrill – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
Steve Tuck – LinkedIn, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Oxide’s $100M Series B
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Oxide is crossing the chasm (Friends)
Bryan Cantrill returns in the wake of Oxide Computer Company’s $100M Series B. Bryan tells us how he’s avoiding an appearance on Silicon Valley (ding), why their uniform compensation is working, where Oxide fits in the AI datacenter, what scaling to 50+ rack orders looks like, and more. (GitHub has no CEO and saving Intel)++
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Depot – 10x faster builds? Yes please. Build faster. Waste less time. Accelerate Docker image builds, and GitHub Actions workflows. Easily integrate with your existing CI provider and dev workflows to save hours of build time.
Featuring:
Bryan Cantrill – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Our $100M Series B / Oxide
James Carville in The War Room
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
From Sun to Oxide (Interview)
Bryan Cantrill, Co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer Company, joins Adam to share his journey from Sun to Oxide – from Sun and Fishworks, to DTrace, to ZFS, to Joyent and Node.js, and now working to build on-prem cloud servers as they should be at Oxide.
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Featuring:
Bryan Cantrill – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Shouting in the Datacenter
Efficiency you can hear
Joyent
Changelog Interviews #475: Making the ZFS file system with Matt Ahrens, co-founder of the ZFS project
Oxide
Oxide Principles
Oxideo Docs: Hypervisor and Storage
Changelog Interviews #155: The Future of Node.js with Scott Hammond
TJ Holowaychuk’s Farewell Node.js
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Bringing the cloud on prem (Friends)
Adam was out when Bryan made his podcast debut here on The Changelog, so we had to get him back on the show along with his co-founder and CEO Steve Tuck to discuss Silicon Valley (the TV show), all things Oxide, homelab possibilities, bringing the power of the cloud on prem, and more.
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Featuring:
Bryan Cantrill – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
Steve Tuck – LinkedIn, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Show Notes:
Crate tui
On the Metal with Jeff Rothschild
Oxide specs
The Changelog #496: Oxide builds servers (as they should be)
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Oxide builds servers (as they should be) (Interview)
Today we have a special treat: Bryan Cantrill, co-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer! You may know Bryan from his work on DTrace. He worked at Sun for many years, then Oracle, and finally Joyent before starting Oxide.
We dig deep into their company’s mission/principles/values, hear how it it all started with a VC’s blank check that turned out to be anything but, and learn how Oxide’s integrated approach to hardware & software sets them up to compete with the established players by building servers as they should be.
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Featuring:
Bryan Cantrill – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Mastodon, X
Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
Gerhard Lazu – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Oxide Computer
Pierre Lamond
Brendan Gregg shouting in the datacenter
On Hubris and Humility: developing an OS for robustness in Rust
Oxide on My Wrist: Hubris on PineTime was the best worst idea
Omicron: Oxide control plane
Oxide on Twitter
Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!
Hyperscaler Infrastructure for the Masses with Jessie Frazelle, Steve Tuck, and Bryan Cantrill of Oxide Computing
Links Referenced
Oxide Website
On The Metal Podcast