FAQ Friday

As my kids say, question mark, question mark, question mark. We actually don’t know how long these things last. We’ve designed them to last for a very, very long time. The reason that I say that we don’t know is because these things are made out of solid state.

There are components that we know will wear out. Yes, the NVMe drives wear out. They’re designed to be field replaceable. We know the fans will wear out. They’re designed to be field replaceable. How long will a sled last? How long will a rack last? A really, really long time.

The reason that we, humanity, don’t tend to know this is because of Moore’s law. Moore’s law has incentivized us to throw out stuff that’s working because there’s something that is so much faster, that’s so much cheaper, that’s available. We believe, however, that Moore’s law is slowing down, and that we’re gonna have more and more reason to run things for a longer and longer time.

We’ve actually seen this happen, too. One of the things that Amazon did somewhat quietly is they changed the depreciation schedule for the gear that they’re running inside of AWS. That had a material change to their bottom line, but none of that was passed on to their customers. When you own equipment, if you wanna own it longer, if you wanna change your own depreciation schedule, you get the advantage of that long life.

So the answer is, we don’t know how long it’ll last. We designed the rack to last at least seven years. I think it’ll last a lot longer than that. Maybe I’ll be watching this in the future, and I’ll be wondering where those Oxide racks that we shipped back in 2026, and how they’re still running, because I think these things can run for a really long time. But it’s been designed to pass on those advantages of longevity to you, the Oxide buyer.

Thanks, and see you next time.