Are bare metal clouds the future?

Bare metal servers are yesterday's news, right? In fact, they could be on the rise. Learn about how bare metal could be replacing virtual machines.

If you're a keen or even casual follower of the world of cloud, you might be of the opinion that the days of bare metal are behind us.

After all, large chunks of the cloud industry operate on the assumption that virtual machines (VMs) provide a scalability, manageability and cost-effectiveness that bare metal simply can't.

And anyway, isn't "bare metal cloud" an oxymoron or, at the very least, a dog's breakfast? Isn't the elevator pitch for the cloud that you don't need your own physical servers anymore?

Confused? Don't be. We're here to lead you through this issue as clearly as we can – because as a company, we have no interest in blinding you with science. We want you to understand the issues so that you can make an informed choice.

So why, then, could bare metal be the future of cloud computing?

BM vs VM: what's at stake?

Before we go any further, it's worth recapping the difference between bare metal and virtual machines – just so we've got all our ducks in a row before we dig into the details.

A bare metal server is a physical server that's the sole preserve of one user. The OS is installed directly onto it without any hypervisor layer. This could be your own piece of kit or a server rented from a cloud provider.

When rented from a cloud provider, it's distinct from "on-premise" servers which, as the name suggests, are based on your business premises and which you – not the provider – maintain.

In either case, you have complete control over the server's infrastructure. You can choose your own OS and fine-tune hardware and software to meet precisely your workload demands.

Virtual machines, by contrast, are run on a physical server which you share with other tenants and which you access and manage from a virtualised console.

It's important to note that virtual servers aren't the only alternative to bare metal – there are also containers, platform-as-a-service and serverless computing. But the bare metal/virtual server distinction is the one most commonly made because of the prevalence of virtual servers.

Why, then, would a company go for bare metal over virtual machines?

1. Cybersecurity

This is, of course, one of the most important issues facing companies of all shapes and sizes. It's a question that feels age-old: how do you leverage the advantages of the cloud without putting your data at risk?

Cloud computing and cybercrime are like the police and the mob. As one improves its security methods, the other finds novel ways to get around it.

Bare metal servers can still be attacked – there's no such thing as a 100% secure cloud solution any more than there's a 100% secure house. But bare metal servers have a much smaller attack surface than virtual servers.

On top of this, a bare metal user isn't at risk of being compromised by fellow tenants. The server is yours, all yours.

2. Troubleshooting

The lack of a hypervisor layer doesn't just give cyber criminals one less thing to attack – it also means that troubleshooting can be expedited.

If something is glitching or dragging, a bare metal manager will usually be able to find it more quickly than a VM administrator.

3. Control

Running workloads on cloud-based VMs is like renting a car on the condition that you can't look under the bonnet – or like renting a house and not being able to bang a nail into the wall.

Colocation facilities don't belong to you – that's the point. But while the tenant/colocator relationship can make maintenance and repairs much easier to handle, it also restricts your visibility. With bare metal, you have full access to access logs, metrics and more.

Similarly, bare metal servers can be customised to meet your needs exactly. Want to take charge of CPU cores, RAM amounts or storage types? With bare metal, you can.

You could, of course, regain this control by moving your workloads back on-premise. But it's going to cost you. Migrating to a bare-metal cloud server will probably be more cost-effective than repatriation.

4.  Raw power

Do you develop AI apps? Then you know how much processing power they require. Bare metal can give this to you more amply than VMs.

5. Cost

Whatever your cloud solution, you need to be on top of your sums. Both bare metal servers and VM machines provide different kinds of savings – so you need to figure out which is best for you.

Licensing multiple VMs can dwarf the running costs of bare metal. On the other hand, bare metal has high upfront costs. You need to weigh up the short-term and long-term costs before making a decision – something that a cloud consultant can help you to do.

6. Workload performance

Are you old enough to remember using a smartphone in the early noughties? Remember how different your expectations were about your device's performance and service availability?

Something similar has happened in the world of cloud. Nowadays, we expect exceptionally high uptime as a given – and every frozen cursor and system reboot is like nails running down a blackboard.

If there's one thing you can say about bare metal servers, it's that they deliver an extremely high level of workload performance. It's like having your own place versus living with friends or family – you're never going to open the virtual fridge door and find that your milk's been taken.

Is the future bare metal?

We don't have a crystal ball – but we're fairly confident that bare metal servers are on the rise and that they could be adopted more and more by enterprises and SMEs alike in the coming years.

No one cloud solution is a clear winner. Your job and ours is to figure out which works best for you . And if you need a high level of performance, customisation and security, the answer might be bare metal.

Do you need help navigating the cloud? Ascend is a trusted provider of managed cloud migration services and VMware consultancy. Get in touch today for an informal, no-obligation chat.