Bare Metal Servers Explained: A Straightforward Guide

Many public cloud service providers (CSPs) now offer bare metal servers. These are physical servers accessed through a cloud-hosted interface. This means that, effectively, they are hardware-as-a-service. Find out what you need to know about them in this guide to bare metal servers explained.

Bare metal servers explained

Bare metal servers are physical servers dedicated entirely to a single customer (tenant). The defining feature of bare metal servers is that they provide direct access to the physical hardware. In other words, there is no need for a virtualization layer.

Bare metal servers vs dedicated servers

Dedicated servers are similar to bare metal servers in that they are also single-tenant physical servers. The key difference, however, is that dedicated servers are typically run as part of managed hosting environments. This means the hosting provider manages the hardware and may offer additional services like software updates, backups, and monitoring.

Bare metal servers vs virtualized servers

Virtualized servers are software-based environments that simulate physical servers, allowing multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on a single physical server. This is achieved through a hypervisor, which manages and allocates the underlying hardware resources among the VM.

Advantages of bare metal

The reason bare metal servers have become a popular option is that they offer numerous advantages as compared to both dedicated servers and virtualized servers. Here is an overview of five of the main benefits offered by bare metal.

Performance

Bare metal servers provide superior performance compared to both dedicated and virtualized servers. This is because bare metal servers offer direct access to hardware resources without any virtualization layer, eliminating the overhead associated with hypervisors. As a result, applications run more efficiently with lower latency and higher throughput, which is critical for performance-sensitive tasks such as high-frequency trading or real-time data processing.

Resource allocation

Unlike virtualized servers, which share hardware resources among multiple virtual machines, bare metal servers allocate all resources exclusively to a single tenant. This ensures predictable and consistent performance without the risk of resource contention that can occur in virtualized environments. Even dedicated servers, while single-tenant, may come with managed services that limit user control over resource allocation. By contrast, bare metal servers give users full control over how resources are used.

Security

Bare metal servers offer enhanced security through physical isolation. Since the server is dedicated to a single tenant and there is no hypervisor, the risk of cross-tenant attacks and hypervisor vulnerabilities is eliminated. This makes bare metal ideal for applications requiring high levels of security. They are also likely to be the default choice in highly regulated industries with stringent compliance requirements.

Customization

With bare metal, users have complete control over the server’s hardware and software configurations. This level of customization allows for optimizing the server environment to meet specific workload requirements, whether it involves choosing particular hardware components, installing custom operating systems, or fine-tuning software settings.

By contrast, dedicated servers may not offer the same level of flexibility due to hosting provider policies, and virtualized servers are limited by the capabilities and restrictions of the hypervisor.

Reliability

Bare metal servers provide a more reliable environment compared to virtualized servers because they avoid the complexities and potential points of failure associated with virtualization. Without the dependency on a hypervisor, there are fewer layers that can malfunction or need updates, reducing the risk of downtime. By contrast, in virtualized environments, the failure of one virtual machine can impact others on the same physical server.

Use cases for bare metal servers

Here are five of the main use cases for bare metal servers.

High-performance computing (HPC)

Bare metal servers are ideal for high-performance computing applications due to their direct access to hardware resources, which eliminates virtualization overhead. Moreover, bare metal can be tailored with specific hardware configurations to meet the intensive demands of HPC workloads. For example, they can include GPU acceleration and/or high-speed networking,

Big data and analytics

Big data applications involve processing vast amounts of data quickly and efficiently. Bare metal offers the necessary performance and scalability to handle complex data queries and real-time analytics. Their dedicated resources ensure that data processing tasks are not slowed down by resource contention, which is common in virtualized environments.

Gaming and streaming services

Online gaming and streaming platforms require low latency and high throughput to deliver a seamless user experience. Bare metal servers provide the performance and network reliability needed to support real-time data transmission and handle high volumes of concurrent users.

Enterprise applications

Bare metal servers are well-suited for hosting business-critical applications. The dedicated hardware ensures consistent application performance, while the physical isolation enhances security.

Database hosting

Databases require high I/O performance and low latency to support fast query processing and transaction handling. Bare metal servers can be configured with high-speed SSDs and ample memory to meet the demanding requirements of modern databases.