A bare metal environment is free of many of the potential shortcomings associated with a shared virtual environment. Many of the potential shortcomings associated with a shared virtual environment are non-factors in the bare metal environment.
Bare metal virtualization offers an uncompromising experience. The tenant has root access, resources are readily available and network latency is reduced for improved performance. The guide below provides a detailed overview of the bare-metal environment. After reading this article, you should be able to make an informed decision about the utility of bare metal servers and how it fits within your IT infrastructure.
What is Bare Metal Server?
A bare metal server is a physical computer specifically designed to run dedicated services without any interruptions for extended periods. It is highly stable, durable, and reliable.
Bare metal servers are a single-tenant environment, meaning that a single server’s physical resources may not be shared between two or more tenants. Due to this physical separation, the “noisy neighbors” effect which plagues virtual environments is not present on bare metal servers. This isolation has a significant impact on performance predictability. This makes bare metal servers the best choice for processing large amounts of data. We’ll explain this last one. When you create a virtual machine, you get a guest operating system sitting on top a hypervisor that sits on top physical hardware. You would not have direct access to physical hardware. You wouldn’t have direct access the physical hardware. You have more options when you create your own platform for hosting a service or an application. We now come to another important point. This means that there is only one layer of software in the virtual environment. You can therefore expect improved performance. It must be noted that bare metal tenants can create virtual machines on top of bare metal in a fashion similar to a virtualized environment.
Bare metal is like having your own house; you can customize it any way you want. You won’t be bothered by noisy neighbors. A public cloud multi tenant virtualized environment, on the other hand, is similar to renting an apartment. The neighbors’ kids drive you crazy with their yelling, and there’s not much you can do about that strange smell in the hallway.
Defining Bare Metal Environments
All environments, virtualized or bare metal, are based on physical hardware. So, even virtualized environments (e.g., public cloud) possess physical hardware underneath.
The term ‘bare metal’ is used mainly to differentiate a physically dedicated server from a virtualized environment and modern cloud hosting forms. In a datacenter, the bare metal servers will not be shared by multiple clients. The single tenant of a bare-metal server has root access. It is available for additional software options, which are not possible with a bare metal hypervisor.
Why Choose a Bare Metal Server?
Bare metal dedicated servers are great for small to medium businesses looking for a cost-effective hosting solution that can quickly automate and scale their resource allocation.
Many experts say that the use of bare metal servers is in decline compared to other hosting options. This type of server is still a popular choice, particularly in many industries. The platform’s unique features allow for the highest level of performance, security, and power. By 2025 it is estimated to reach USD 26,21 billion. Source: Grandview Research
Industries that traditionally rely on dedicated hosting solutions and colocation are the banking and financial services industry, health care, and government. This option is preferred over virtualized servers for projects such as rendering farms and media encoding operations due to the higher performance levels. Render farms and media encoding operations are examples of projects that use this option rather than virtualized servers because of the heightened performance levels.
Innovative software development companies use bare metal dedicated servers as an affordable way to test and launch products.
Industries with the highest needs for data security, world-class performance, and precise data operations are most likely to use bare metal systems. This market will grow as the need for storage and big data grows. Up until 2016, the SMB market was a more significant consumer of bare metal infrastructure. Up until 2016, the SMB market was a more significant consumer of the bare metal infrastructure.
The largest driver of growth over the entire market is expected to be advertising and emerging technological advancements.
Advantages
When using bare metal, you don’t have to compete with other users on the same system for resources. This type of server can provide high performance to all users. In most cases, a dedicated server is able to handle a greater workload than a virtual machine of the same type. This makes dedicated hosting best for users who need top levels of performance.
Compared to other types of dedicated servers, bare metal is often easier to manage due to being in a data center. The majority of providers provide a variety of configuration options which can be tailored to your specific needs. Many companies find it beneficial to have a third-party manage their server. So, having a third-party manage your server for you can be a benefit for many companies.
Managed servers are also more cost-effective than on-site servers. Data centers are much more efficient than internal setups. They can provide more for less. They also provide other benefits such as a higher bandwidth connection.
Most data centers also offer services that are very valuable to IT teams. This includes 24/7 support and regular security audits. You can read more about the differences in dedicated servers and public clouds in our article “Cloud vs. Dedicated Server: Which Is Best For Your Business?”
At the Forefront of New Technology
Companies are taking advantage of bare metal infrastructure to employ new technologies in exciting ways.
For instance, containers bring another level of performance capability to the bare metal environment. Containers running on bare metal servers are an alternative to virtual machine (VM). Containers are more resource efficient than VMs, since each VM is limited by its overhead. Containers use less memory. Containers on bare metal are the ideal environment for developing applications. This computing style emphasizes big data and analytics. Considering GPUs are the driving force of deep learning, bare metal’s data crunching and GPU capabilities make it the perfect platform for such tasks.
Understanding the basics of bare metal helps tremendously when trying to make sense of these new developments.
Flexible Hosting Options
Organizations can run bare-metal servers from in-house data centers, a colocation center, or partner with a managed service provider to lease a server.
Each of these options has its advantages and drawbacks, but leasing a bare metal server is the most cost-effective solution for small to medium organizations. It takes more time to deploy a bare-metal server than a virtualized one. It can take anywhere between several hours and even up to a couple of days to provision a server as there is more customization that takes place.
Even though provisioning and maintaining a bare metal server may take more time, it all makes sense once its performance reliability proves to be a game-changer for your organization.
Server Access
Servers are accessed through a private network, and the tenant interacts with the device through remote desktop access. Connecting to a VPN endpoint establishes a private network connection. Secure Shell (SSH), a tunnel that allows you to connect to Linux servers, is the best way to do it. You can connect to a server just as if the server was on your computer. For enhanced security, remote desktop access software encrypts on both the server’s end and your end.
Initially, you access the server as the root user. This is the “all-mighty superuser” who can do everything on the server. If you want to limit the danger of accidental changes, you will want to create a non-root user.
Managing a Bare Metal Server
There is a general belief that operating bare metal servers requires a large team of IT professionals. This may be the case for on-premise solutions, but it is not always true when it comes colocation or leasing. Managed service providers provide a wide range of services to assist you in running your online business. You can focus on your goals by outsourcing your IT to a provider. For example, if you lease a fully managed dedicated server to resell hosting, you can concentrate on selling your services while your IT service provider handles everything else.
The extent to which you participate in managing the server may vary, but generally, you need to cover the following:
Updates and Patches
Regularly update the OS and perform software patches. It is this that protects the bare metal server against malicious attacks. Also, run the chkrootkit, rkhunter, and clamav server application tools regularly.
Monitoring
You need to monitor key operational metrics of the server, switches, firewalls, etc. Set up early thresholds and alarms that will notify when a threshold has been crossed.
Password Management
Regularly change your server passwords, including administrative users and root password.
Remote Hands
Proper management of the bare metal environment includes the ability to customize it across borders without a considerable lead time.
Setting Up and Monitoring Firewalls
These are pieces of hardware or software that prohibit unwanted traffic. Firewalls are pieces of hardware or software that prevent unwanted traffic. The goal is to know which ports you need to open and for what purpose.
Unfortunately, there is no one-fits-all solution. Each instance may require a unique approach to traffic management.
Operational Management
This includes a myriad of tasks, such as hardware replacement, domain name services, bare metal backup and recovery, migration of data, etc.
Make Good Use of Client Portals and APIs
Most enterprise-grade service providers offer a client portal that grants clients’ insight into their resources and an opportunity to scale easily through a portal interface or an API. Role-based access
If many members of your organization interact with the bare metal infrastructure of your company, it is important to segregate duties and permissions based on role.
The Initial Setup of Bare Metal Servers
Identifying Requirements
First, every organization needs to be aware of how they plan on using bare metal. Think about your intended use. Will it be for a database,
application, or network device? Are you planning to use it in dev/QA, or production? Every unique use case needs different configurations, and if you don’t do your research, you certainly won’t find the right solution.
When you define your requirements, you can start thinking about the configuration.
Off the Shelf Configurations and Non-Configured Setups
There are off the shelf configurations that are created for specific workloads. Managed service providers often offer pre-configured servers for heavy graphical processing and data crunching. The sales team will assist you in finding the best bare-metal server for your needs. This is because the term bare metal implies that it’s a new server with a blank slate. You choose the relational database software, such as MySQL, and the operating system, such as CentOS, Microsoft Server 2016 Ubuntu, etc. You can create a virtualized environment by creating a custom install or setting up your own hypervisor. You have the option of doing a custom install or setting up your own hypervisor to create a virtualized environment.
All these options can be modified after your initial deployment but be aware that such modifications will require data deletion.
Other Considerations
Bare metal takes more time and know-how to implement than cloud hosting. Cloud hosting is more flexible, but it can be slower to implement. Since you are bound to the hardware, problems can be a major issue. Cloud-based solutions circumvent this by not linking the server instance to a single physical machine.
Compared to cloud hosting, dedicated servers are most cost-effective when you are using its resources to their fullest. The benefits of cloud servers are usually beyond the requirements of most businesses. Therefore, it is typically best to opt for a cloud server.
To Lease or Buy
The decision to lease or buy all comes down to your needs and requirements. The cost of purchasing a server is high, but it gives you access to the best hardware. It is best to look at the Total Cost Of Ownership (TCO). TCO includes your initial investments and all operational expenses, such as system uptime, technical support, and redundancy.
If you decide to buy, plan whether you will run things on-premise or lease racks at a colocation center, which set up rooms created primarily to house servers. On-premise will strain your budget as you will need to achieve and maintain data center-like conditions.
Generally, colocation is a sensible proposition only if you are looking into expensive high-end servers or are in the market for several bare metal servers.
Lease
By now, you might have noticed that leasing a bare metal server is the most straightforward and most convenient option for most deployments. It is difficult to scale bare metal servers and ensure the correct conditions in-house. That is why even some large organizations choose to lease as a simple and cost-effective alternative.
Server Location
The next step would be to select the server location. Delivering the fastest result in today’s fast paced environment is essential. DoubleClick, a Google subsidiary, conducted a study on the impact of slow loading times on businesses in 2016. They reported that “53% of mobile site visits are abandoned if pages take longer than 3 seconds to load.” Response time has a lot to do with location and, typically, you want to avoid data passing through multiple processing points before service delivery.
Regardless of whether you lease or opt to physically place your servers in a colocation center, carefully pick the right service provider. Begin by identifying the geographical location of your users. If you are running a global business, the right thing to do would be to find a global provider with multiple presence points.
Additionally, security is of paramount importance. Some industries, such as healthcare and payment processing, prescribe very stringent security rules (i.e., HIPAA and PCI).
Organizations processing delicate information must adhere to these rules, and failing to do so might come at a steep price if a consumer data breach affects their systems or infrastructure. It is therefore very time-consuming and difficult to set up an on-premise solution. Quality IT service providers maintain PCI-DSS and HIPAA Compliance, thus providing a secure platform for your business.
No organization should install bare metal servers on-premise if they aren’t 100% sure to maintain the proper environmental conditions, maintain efficient redundancy, and adhere to security protocols.
For the sake of simplicity, we will consider the only colocation and leasing bare metal servers for the remainder of this article.
Public Bandwidth
How much traffic are you expecting? Public Bandwidth
How much traffic are you expecting? Upgrade your service plan if you expect higher traffic. RAID Setup
The most common problem you’ll encounter with your server is a hard disk drive (HDD). You don’t want your valuable data to be lost if you choose a managed service. Data is stored on all hard drives of the array. This allows a drive to fail and not lose data. RAID is designed for workloads that are critical and where data loss and failure would be disastrous to an organisation. Bear in mind that RAID’s objective is to reduce downtime, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for backups.
There are several types and levels of RAID:
RAID 0 – Data is chunked and split between drives using striping, speeding up writing and reading speeds. This setup offers no protection. All data is lost if one hard drive fails. The usable capacity is equal to the total physical capacity.
RAID 1 -This setup uses a process called ‘mirroring.’ It writes data to both hard disks, so you don’t lose data even if one disk fails. Remember that you will have halved your storage space. This means that if you provision 20 TB of storage space, you have 10 TB of usable capacity.
RAID 5 – Data is written across all drives (minimum of three drives) with additional information called ‘parity.’ If any hard disk fails, data can be retrieved using that extra information. Usable storage is the total storage minus one hard drive. RAID 5 is slow during a writing phase and is therefore not recommended for database servers. The data is divided into stripes and then mirrored across multiple hard drives. The usable capacity is 50% of the total physical capacity.
Bare Metal Environment vs. Virtualization
The virtualized environment is the primary alternative to the bare metal server. The usefulness of both environments for businesses is determined by many differences.
First, let’s define virtual machines and then look at some of the most important distinctions between the two infrastructures.
When speaking of cloud instances, each virtual machine is part of a shared hosting environment with multiple tenants. In modern deployments, virtualized environments can also be dedicated. This means that there is segregation of hardware. In modern deployments, however, virtualized environments can also be dedicated, meaning that there is segregation of hardware.
For example, Private Cloud hosting is one example of a highly customizable single-tenant cloud service.
Generally, VMs are easily scalable and budget-friendly but lack the computing power of bare metal servers.
Performance
A bare metal server outpaces virtual machines in performance, all else being equal. A dedicated server is able to provide all physical resources to a single tenant, without the need to share. The presence of a virtual server prevents software from taking advantage of architectural benefits of physical hardware. This places bare metal users in a unique position to make far better use of specific hardware pieces.
Security
Compared to public cloud instances, server colocation and bare metal servers have heightened security because of their isolation away from other clients. In multi-tenant virtualized environments, malware infected data streams can affect resource distribution across the server. Although other data streams are quarantined from the infection, the neighbors may suffer the effects of a redirected resource load.
Resource Usage
Resource usage on bare metal servers is highly predictable compared to virtualized environments. A bare-metal server is the best option if you are planning to crunch data or run apps that will experience unexpected spikes in usage. Crunching data in the cloud will most certainly get very expensive as you would have to provision vast capacities to maintain predictable performance.
Control
A single tenant exercises more control over a single physical server than a group of people does in the cloud. The bare metal environment allows a client to fully control and predict bandwidth, memory usage, and other important web hosting aspects.
Scaling
Virtual machines are far easier to scale as additional resources can be provisioned in a couple of minutes. With bare metal servers you will need to plan. It is more challenging to scale and adapt to current requirements.
Another thing to consider is that a single VM doesn’t offer enough resources for some use cases. A single VM, for example, may only have 64 GB of RAM, 2 TB storage and 8 vCPU. In contrast, a bare metal solution may offer the maximum resource limit of the latest technology.
Long-Term Hosting SolutionVirtual machines are often deployed for short-term use, while bare metal is considered one of the favored solutions for long-term deployments. There are several significant contributing factors.
First, there are no other tenants to compete with for the server’s physical resources, so it is much easier to scale and combine your resources. Although many service providers do not place a limit on virtual resources in their services, they still have a soft limit. Second, the requirements of an organization are always changing. Bare metal servers are able to cater for many different workloads due to the additional customization options they offer. A hybrid environment can also be built using bare metal servers. A hybrid environment combines bare metal servers and modern cloud solutions to provide the best of both worlds.
Industries with compliance guidelines can make use of dedicated servers for increased security. Healthcare, finance and government sectors should store financial and personal information of their end users in compliant infrastructure. Colocation is a good fit for these use cases.
Hybrid: The Best of Both Worlds
It is possible to capture the best of both worlds by bringing together bare metal and virtualization. This model allows tenants to be untethered from a physical machine, but with the same power and access as a dedicated server. A single virtual tenant runs on each physical server. A web-based portal allows users to manage and provision servers. The time and cost to configure can be similar to services hosted in a virtualized environment. Learn more about bare metal clouds and what the best uses are for this technology. For more details, visit our Bare Metal Cloud provider service page.
When It’s the Right Choice
Specific workloads suit a bare metal set up better than others. Businesses that have high performance and/or security needs may get a lot out of this option.
Dedicated machines are great for workloads that require a lot of computing resources and low latency. Streaming video, hosting large graphics or running demanding web applications are some examples. Teams who are rendering animations or working with large amounts of data can also get a lot of mileage from bare metal.
Businesses that deal with compliance or have data that needs to be kept very secure may also prefer to use bare metal. This is a great option for teams in healthcare and finance. A dedicated server is more secure. Also, the hardware can be set up to meet regulatory requirements.
Are Bare Metal Servers a Good Fit?
Bare metal servers continue to be an essential component of many companies IT infrastructures. There are many advantages to using this environment.
Bare metal offers the best that current technology has to offer. When hosting bare metal with an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider, you can quickly scale globally by leveraging the provider’s expertise across all professional dimensions of managing such infrastructure. This means that you get an affordable way to cluster your resources, globally.
Other perks of bare metal include the ability to hybridize your infrastructure by unifying your bare metal and virtual assets.
Growing businesses should consider bare metal as a long-term solution for data storage and transfer. There is no better solution when it comes to pure power, the flexibility of structure and customization capabilities.
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