Bare metal servers have become an increasingly popular option for businesses looking to lease dedicated server hardware in data centers without the overhead of virtualization and multitenancy. But what exactly are bare metal servers and what advantages can they offer over traditional hosted virtual servers? This article provides an extensive overview of key bare metal server attributes, potential use cases, architectural considerations, benefits, limitations and tips to evaluate if a bare metal deployment aligns best with your application workloads.
Defining Bare Metal Servers
In the hosting realm, bare metal servers refer to leased machines residing in remote data center facilities where clients retain full control and accessibility as if the hardware were onsite. Unlike with virtual servers, bare metal nodes run workloads directly on the underlying hardware with no dependence on hypervisor abstraction layers for partitioning resources across multiple virtual instances. Simply stated – you rent the full dedicated server sans any partialization or neighbors competing for compute, storage or bandwidth capacity.
This equates to exceptional performance, flexibility and customization potential since workloads never contend with “noisy neighbors” instigating resource constraints. The isolated hardware acts as a blank canvas where clients freely install operating systems, applications and storage devices tuned expressly to current workload priorities rather than conforming to predetermined virtual machine (VM) configurations. You own end-to-end control minus the capital expenses or maintenance hassles of on-premise infrastructure ownership.
Ideal Workload Candidates
Certain compute-intensive, time-sensitive or security-focused applications stand to gain significant advantages hosted on dedicated bare metal server architectures versus resource-shared virtual infrastructure. Prime examples include:
Database Servers – Bare metal isolation accelerates transactions, queries and table locking.
Legacy Applications – Older platforms lacking virtualization optimizations operate better directly on hardware.
Big Data Analytics – Demanding analytics and machine learning workloads process faster bare metal.
Gaming Servers – Fast action video games need unhindered access to GPU cycles.
High Performance Computing – Scientific models and simulations crunch faster leveraging full hardware access.
Blockchain Applications – Crypto-mining and transaction validation performs better bare metal.
Additionally, any applications containing sensitive IP, financial data or customer information too risky to co-mingle with other virtual tenant activity benefit security-wise from bare metal isolation.
Architecture Advantages
Beyond workload performance gains, transitioning services from virtualized infrastructure to bare metal servers also imparts several architectural advantages including:
Total Visibility
Without opaque virtualization middleware hindering transparency, bare metal clients gain complete server visibility for precise troubleshooting.
Agile Provisioning
Software-defined bare metal allows programmatic server builds spanning physical nodes making configuration changes easy.
Workload Mobility
Migrating workloads across homogeneous bare metal fleets in a common data center proves seamless.
Global Deployment
Leading providers allow bare metal server allocation across dispersed global data centers to better align nearest workloads and end users.
Furthermore, for applications needing intermediate scaling past a single node to remain cost effective, bare metal platforms support distributed architectures like horizontal clusters or scale-out node chains easier since resource availability stays reliable versus virtual hosts sporadically throttling behind-the-scenes.
Limitations
Despite sizable performance and control benefits inherent with bare metal servers, limitations worth noting do exist mostly stemming from inflexible resource dedication compared to fluid virtual environments. Consider the following drawbacks when determining if bare metal solutions best fit your needs:
Stranded Resources
Poor planning can lead to allocated bandwidth, storage or specialized hardware needlessly going underutilized long term as demands shift.
Scalability Gaps
Adding new bare metal capacity requires lead time and operations team coordination unlike instantly spinning up preconfigured VMs.
Limited Flexibility
Supporting diverse operating systems or future application migration may prove prohibitively complex on dedicated single-tenant hardware.
Assessing Bare Metal Viability
So how do technology leaders determine if deploying solutions on bare metal servers warrants consideration? Alongside profiling application architectures and workload requirements, asking the following strategic questions also helps guide next step planning:
Do existing services experience periodic resource constraints or traffic backlogs on virtualized infrastructure?
Are solutions prohibited from leveraging modern hybrid cloud innovations due to legacy platform restrictions?
Does application licensing, encryption or access management preclude co-mingling workloads?
Is hardware performance consistency essential for quality user experiences?
Are operational leaders willing to embrace infrastructure automation and scripting?
If answers reveal debilitating platform bottlenecks, complex legacy barriers, security risks, fluctuating resources or openness to infrastructure-as-code practices then migrating targeted services to dedicated bare metal servers could deliver compelling advantages.
In summary, modern bare metal servers deliver single-tenant hardware isolation sought by organizations seeking improved performance, heightened accessibility and robust control over compute-driven workloads not practical to sustain within resource-shared virtualization platforms. Businesses able to embrace automation while navigating limitations around dedicated resourcing stand to tap meaningfully into bare metal capabilities spanning security, speed and agility. Work closely with account representatives from leading bare metal companies to translate observed infrastructure constraints into targeted bare metal architectures demonstrating measurable value across key application metrics. When aligned to ideal use cases, bare metal solutions unleash workload innovations and user experiences difficult replicating otherwise.