A secure, powerful, and reliable digital infrastructure can be built on top of a single tenant physical server, also known as a bare metal server. The bare metal environment eliminates many of the drawbacks of a shared virtual environment.
Virtualization based on bare metal hardware provides the best possible performance. Root access is granted to the tenant, who benefits from faster access to resources and reduced network latency. The tenant can tailor the server to their specific requirements with bare metal.
A detailed introduction to the bare metal environment is provided in the document below. Your ability to make an informed decision about the utility of bare metal servers and their place in your IT infrastructure should have improved after reading this article.
A bare metal server is a physical computer that is designed to run dedicated services continuously for long periods of time. It is extremely stable, long-lasting, and dependable.
Bare metal servers are a single-tenant environment, which means that the physical resources of a single server cannot be shared by two or more tenants.
Due to this physical separation, bare metal servers are immune to the “noisy neighbor” problem that plagues virtual environments. The predictability of performance is one of the major advantages of this isolation. As a result, bare metal servers have the most stable environment, which makes them ideal for processing large amounts of data.
Direct access to the server and the ability to use all underlying hardware architectures are also significant advantages. Let’s take a look at the latter. You get a guest OS on top of a hypervisor on top of physical hardware when you create a virtual machine (VM). Only the guest OS and the management interface used to create the VM would be accessible to you as a user. Physical hardware would be unavailable to you.
A bare metal server, on the other hand, gives you complete access to the underlying architecture. When creating your own platform to host a service or application, the advantage is that you have more options. This brings us to another important point.
In contrast to the virtual environment, which requires at least one additional layer of software – a Type 1 hypervisor – bare metal servers do not require the use of multiple layers of software.
In everyday use, this means there is one less layer of software between you and your physical hardware. As a result, you can anticipate improved performance. It’s worth noting that in a virtualized environment, bare metal tenants can create virtual machines on top of bare metal.
You can customize bare metal in any way you want, just like you can customize your own home. You are not required to deal with obnoxious neighbors.
A public cloud multi-tenant virtualized environment, on the other hand, is similar to renting an apartment. The yelling of the next-door kids drives you insane, and there’s nothing you can do about the strange odor in the hallway.
Bare Metal Environments
Physical hardware underpins all environments, whether virtualized or bare metal. As a result, even virtualized environments (such as the public cloud) have physical hardware beneath them.
The term ‘bare metal’ is typically used to distinguish a physically dedicated server from a virtualized environment or modern cloud hosting models. Bare metal servers are those in a data center that aren’t shared by multiple clients.
It’s important to keep in mind that even a virtualized environment contains physical hardware. However, the shared hosting deployment model, which is common in virtual environments, distinguishes itself by allowing end users to work with virtual resources rather than bare metal.
A bare metal server’s single tenant has root privileges. Additional software options are available, which are not possible with a bare metal hypervisor.
Why Choose a Bare Metal Server?
Small to medium businesses looking for a cost-effective hosting solution that can quickly automate and scale their resource allocation will benefit from bare metal dedicated servers.
According to many experts, the use of bare metal servers is declining in comparison to other hosting options. This type of server, on the other hand, is still a popular choice in many industries. The platform’s unique characteristics enable it to deliver elite levels of performance, power, and security.
The market for bare metal servers was estimated to be worth USD 1.3 billion in 2016. It is expected to reach USD 26.21 billion by 2025. Grandview Research is the source for this information.
Banking and financial services, health care, and government are three industries that have traditionally relied on dedicated hosting solutions and colocation. Furthermore, bare metal is ideal for mission-critical, high-intensity workloads like business intelligence or database apps. Because of the increased performance levels, render farms and media encoding operations are examples of projects that use this option rather than virtualized servers.
Innovative software development firms use bare metal dedicated servers to test and launch products at a low cost.
Bare metal systems are most commonly used in industries that require the highest levels of data security, world-class performance, and precise data operations. This market will continue to expand as the demand for storage grows in tandem with the growth of big data. The majority of usage is expected to come from large businesses in these industries. Until 2016, the SMB market accounted for a larger share of bare metal infrastructure consumption.
Advertising and emerging technological advancements are expected to be the primary drivers of market growth.
Advantages
When you use bare metal, you don’t have to compete for resources with other users on the same system.
This type of server can provide high performance to all users. In most cases, a dedicated server can handle a greater workload than a comparable virtual machine. As a result, dedicated hosting is ideal for users who require high levels of performance.
Due to its location in a data center, bare metal dedicated servers are often easier to manage than other types of dedicated servers. Most providers offer a variety of setup options that can be tailored to your specific requirements. Managing a server can be time-consuming and difficult. For many businesses, having a third-party manage your server can be beneficial.
In addition, managed servers are less expensive than on-site servers. In comparison to in-house setups, data centers are more streamlined. As a result, they can provide more at a lower price. They also have other advantages, such as a faster connection.
Most data centers also provide services that are extremely beneficial to IT departments. Guaranteed uptime, 24/7 support, and regular security audits are just a few examples. Even better, outsourcing these services eliminates the need to hire in-house personnel to complete them.
New Technology
Companies are using bare metal infrastructure to experiment with new technologies.
Containers, for example, add to the bare metal environment’s performance capability. Virtual machines can be replaced by running containers on bare metal servers (VMs).
Containers outperform virtual machines in terms of resource consumption, as each VM has a small overhead, whereas containers use less memory. Containers running on top of bare metal provide the ideal environment for app development.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence are being experimented with by large corporations. Big data, mathematics, analytics, and visualization are all key components of this type of computing. Given that GPUs are at the heart of deep learning, the data crunching and GPU capabilities of bare metal make it an ideal platform for such tasks.
When trying to make sense of these new developments, knowing the fundamentals of bare metal is extremely helpful.
Flexible Hosting
Organizations can run bare-metal servers from their own data centers, a colocation center, or by leasing a server from a managed service provider.
Each of these options has benefits and drawbacks, but for small to medium businesses, leasing a bare metal server is the most cost-effective option. Nowadays, deploying leased servers is relatively simple, and most IT service providers offer pre-configured dedicated servers ready for any specialized workload.
Secure bare metal servers based on Intel Xeon scalable processors, for example, are cost-effective enterprise-grade solutions capable of handling any intensive workload.
Bare-Metal Server Deployment Time
It takes longer to set up a bare metal server than it does to set up a virtualized environment, which can be done in a matter of minutes. Provisioning a server can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days, depending on how much customization is required.
Even though provisioning and maintaining a bare metal server takes longer, once its performance reliability proves to be a game-changer for your organization, it all makes sense.
Server Access
The tenant interacts with the server via remote desktop access, which is accessed through a private network. A VPN establishes a private network connection by connecting to a specific end-point. A Secure Shell (SSH) tunnel can be used to connect to a Linux-based server. This allows you to connect to a server as if it were physically present on your computer. Remote desktop access software encrypts both the server and your end for added security.
You log in to the server as the root user at first. That’s the ‘all-powerful superuser,’ who has complete control over the server. You should create a non-root user if you want to reduce the risk of unintentional changes.
Managing Bare-Metal Server
There is a widespread misconception that running bare metal servers necessitates a large team of IT experts. While this may be true for an on-premise solution, it may not be true for colocation and leasing. Managed service providers can help you run your online business by providing a wide range of additional services. This means you can focus on your business goals while simplifying your operations by outsourcing IT work to a service provider. If you rent a fully managed dedicated server to resell hosting, for example, you can focus on selling your services while your IT provider takes care of the rest.
The extent to which you participate in server management may vary, but you must generally cover the following:
Patches and Updates
Update the operating system and apply software patches on a regular basis. This is how your bare metal server is protected from malicious attacks. Run chkrootkit, rkhunter, and clamav server application tools on a regular basis as well.
Monitoring
You must keep track of the server’s, switches’, and firewalls’ key operational metrics. Set up early thresholds and alarms to alert you when a certain level has been reached.
Management of Passwords
Change the passwords on your server on a regular basis, especially for administrative users and root.
Remote Hands
The ability to customize the bare metal environment across borders without a long lead time is part of proper bare metal management.
Firewall Configuration and Monitoring
These are hardware or software devices that block unwanted traffic. Firewall rules would be set up to limit traffic based on service port, destination IP address, or IP protocol. The goal is to figure out which ports you need to open and why.
Unfortunately, no one-size-fits-all solution exists. Each situation may necessitate a different approach to traffic management.
Management of Operations
This covers a wide range of tasks, including hardware replacement, domain name services, bare metal backup and recovery, data migration, and so on.
Use Client Portals and APIs to their Full Potential
Most enterprise-grade service providers provide clients with a client portal that gives them access to their resources and allows them to scale easily via a portal interface or an API.
Access Controlled by Roles
You’ll want to create role-based segregation of duties and permissions if a large number of your organization’s members interact with your bare metal infrastructure.
Bare-Metal Setup
Identifying what you need
The first thing every company needs to know is how they plan to use bare metal. It might be a database server, a network device, or an application server. Do you want to use it for development and QA, or do you just want to use it in the real world? Everyone has a different use case, and if you don’t do your homework, you won’t find the right answer.
When you figure out what you need, you can start thinking about how to set it up.
Off the Shelf Configurations and Non-Configured Setups
There are pre-made configurations that are made for certain jobs. Most managed service providers have servers that are already set up for data crunching, heavy graphical processing, and other types of special tasks. Even if your company needs a certain type of server, most sales teams will help you get the right bare metal server.
Control Panels and Database Software Options
This is a big reason why bare metal servers are good. The word “bare” implies a clean slate, which means you can use the server’s full power. This means that you choose the underlying relational database software (e.g., MySQL) and the operating system (e.g., CentOS). The control panel and add-ons are also your choice. You have full control. You can choose to do a custom install or set up your own hypervisor to make a virtualized environment.
All of these options can be changed after your first deployment, but be aware that any changes will require the data to be deleted.
Other things to think about
People who want to use cloud hosting need more time and knowledge to set up bare metal than people who want to use cloud hosting. It can also be less flexible as it grows.
Any problems with the hardware can have a big effect on you because you are tied to it. If you use a cloud-based solution, you don’t have to connect the server instance to a single physical machine.
Because dedicated servers are more expensive than cloud hosting, they are more cost-effective when you use them to their fullest. There are, however, many businesses that don’t need all the benefits that come with it. Because of this, it is usually best to use a cloud server instead.
Buy or Lease Bare-Metal
It all comes down to your needs and requirements when deciding whether to lease or buy. Buying a server gives you the most access to hardware, but it comes at a cost. Even if you budget for the necessary and often large upfront investments, you must also factor in ongoing server maintenance and administration costs.
It would be preferable if you took into account the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The total cost of ownership (TCO) includes all initial investments as well as all operational costs, such as system uptime, technical support, and redundancy.
Plan whether you’ll run things on-premise or lease racks at a colocation center, which sets up rooms designed specifically to house servers, if you decide to buy. On-premise will put a strain on your budget because data center-like conditions must be achieved and maintained.
Private colocation, on the other hand, gives you all of the interconnectivity, redundancy, cooling, electrical power, and stringent security regulations of a data center while also giving you control over the hardware. For example, phoenixNAP’s flagship data center in Phoenix, Arizona, provides direct access to Amazon’s cloud service as well as up to 500 watts/sq. ft. of power capacity.
In general, colocation is only a good idea if you’re looking for expensive high-end servers or a large number of bare metal servers.
You may have noticed that for most deployments, leasing a bare metal server is the most straightforward and convenient option. It’s difficult to ensure the right conditions and scale bare metal servers in-house. As a result, even large corporations prefer to lease as a simple and cost-effective option.
Many providers promise quick deployment and high network availability. For example, phoenixNAP deploys your server in four (4) hours if no special instructions are included in the order, and guarantees 100 percent uptime. If a component fails, onsite personnel will troubleshoot and resolve the problem for you. However, you must keep an eye out for hardware failures and submit a support ticket as soon as possible.
Server Physical Location
The next step is to decide on a server location. In today’s fast-paced world, getting the best results as soon as possible is critical. In 2016, Google’s DoubleClick conducted research on the impact of slow loading times on businesses. “If pages take longer than 3 seconds to load, 53 percent of mobile site visits are abandoned,” they said. Response time is highly dependent on location, and you should try to avoid having data pass through multiple processing points before receiving service.
Whether you lease or physically place your servers in a colocation center, choose the right service provider carefully. Begin by determining where your users are located. If you run a global company, the best thing you can do is look for a global provider with multiple locations.
The other option is to purchase and control the server on company property. An on-premise setup is what it’s called. Servers, on the other hand, require specific conditions to function properly. Temperature, humidity, proximity to automated cooling, and the physical security of the server are all important factors to consider.
Furthermore, safety is of paramount importance. Security regulations are very strict in some industries, such as healthcare and payment processing (i.e., HIPAA and PCI).
Organizations that handle sensitive data must follow these guidelines, and failing to do so could cost them a lot of money if a consumer data breach affects their systems or infrastructure. This makes an on-premise installation extremely difficult and time-consuming. PCI-DSS and HIPAA compliance are maintained by quality IT service providers, ensuring a secure platform for your business.
No company should install bare metal servers on its premises unless it is certain that the proper environmental conditions, efficient redundancy, and security protocols will be met.
Best Choice?
Some workloads are better suited to a bare metal setup than others. Businesses with high performance and/or security requirements may benefit greatly from this option.
Dedicated machines are ideal for workloads requiring a large amount of computing power and low latency. Streaming video, hosting large amounts of graphics, and running taxing web apps are all examples of this. Bare metal can also benefit teams that are rendering animations or working with large amounts of data.
Bare metal is also a good option for businesses that deal with compliance or have sensitive data to protect. Teams in the healthcare or finance industries, for example, are excellent candidates for this service. Controlling access to a dedicated server is much easier. In addition, the hardware can be configured to comply with regulatory requirements.
Bare metal servers are still an important part of many businesses’ IT infrastructures. Using this environment has numerous advantages.
Bare metal represents the pinnacle of current technology. By leveraging the provider’s expertise across all professional dimensions of managing such infrastructure, you can quickly scale globally when hosting bare metal with an Infrastructure-as-a-Service provider. This means you’ll be able to cluster your resources globally at a low cost.
The ability to hybridize your infrastructure by unifying your bare metal and virtual assets is another benefit of bare metal.
Growing businesses should think about bare metal as a long-term data storage and transfer solution. When it comes to pure power, structure flexibility, and customization capabilities, there is no better option.