Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Assessment Dashboard - Cloud Migration (Excel workbook). The Cloud Migration Self-Assessment will make you a Cloud Migration domain expert by: 1. Reducing the effort in the Cloud Migration work to be done to get problems solved 2. Ensuring that plans of action include every Cloud Migration task and that every Cloud Migration outcome is in place 3. [read more]
Does Bare Metal Cloud Make Sense for Your Business?
Also, if you are interested in becoming an expert on Digital Transformation, take a look at Flevy's Digital Transformation Frameworks offering here. This is a curated collection of best practice frameworks based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. By learning and applying these concepts, you can you stay ahead of the curve. Full details here.
* * * *
The cloud is a great place to store and access your data, but what if you need to process it?
Enter bare-metal cloud providers, which offer dedicated hardware and software for running applications and services. This is a great option for companies with intense data analytics requirements or those who need to do large-scale data mining.
This article will explore the benefits of a bare-metal cloud and how you can use it for your business.
What Is a Bare-Metal Cloud?
Regular cloud computing is a “virtual” cloud, meaning the infrastructure is shared with other users. But bare metal cloud infrastructures are an “actual” cloud, meaning it’s a dedicated service. Bare metal servers typically have their own OS and storage, and they’re not virtualized.
A bare metal cloud is like running your own computer in the data center. You don’t have to worry about your computer being on another network, or worried about an Internet outage and losing your data. The bare metal server just needs to connect to the Internet and back.
In other words, a bare metal cloud provider like Maxihost lets you rent the equipment exclusively, not just rent the services. It has the potential to be a cost-effective approach to storing, processing, and transmitting large amounts of data.
What Are the Benefits of Bare-Metal Cloud?
1) Increased security and exclusive performance
Bare-metal cloud can help speed up application development and increase security. Because only your company is using the equipment and not sharing resources with any other cloud platform customers, you’re getting the full hardware capabilities of the infrastructure for your data-centric workloads.
If you have to run an application on a public cloud, the resources of the server racks are being spread across dozens, if not hundreds, of other customers. It’s difficult to guarantee consistency of performance for every individual customer’s workload. Bare metal cloud servers are exclusive to the customer renting them, which means you can be confident that you’ll get consistent, high-quality service.
2) Customization
Bare metal servers can be configured to your needs and specifications. If you want the server configured with 32GB of RAM and a high-end GPU for analyzing massive amounts of data, you can request it. Each bare metal cloud provider offers the ability to configure the hardware.
3) Scalability
Bare metal servers are scalable for many different workloads, whether your business is a startup, or an enterprise-level company looking to expand its capabilities. You can set a goal of how many cloud-based infrastructure resources you want to rent each month, and just add more resources as necessary if you hit a wall.
4) Flexibility
If your company uses a massive amount of data, you can spread your infrastructure across multiple bare metal servers. In a virtualized environment, there’s no flexibility, so you may have to host all your data in the same location, which could result in high latency.
By taking a bare-metal approach, you can access as much or as little computing power as you need, depending on the needs of your organization and the data you want to process.
5) Reduced downtime and outages
The other advantage of bare metal cloud is that your infrastructure is dedicated and isolated from other tenants. Public cloud platforms typically have scheduled maintenance, which can affect your business operations. But with an isolated bare metal cloud server, you can choose your own maintenance schedule, so downtime is less likely to occur.
Conclusion
The advantages of bare-metal cloud can be invaluable for a wide range of businesses. By managing the infrastructure for your applications, you’ll have the peace of mind that your applications are isolated from other tenants so that you can be confident that your business won’t be affected if someone else is upgrading the servers behind you.
If you still aren’t decided, talk it over with your IT team so that they can help guide your decision, and determine the exact hardware resources you’ll need for the business.
42-page Word document
This document provides both an outline of the various sections you should include in a document which describes your organisations cloud strategy and extensive example content.
The example content is drawn from a real world example cloud strategy for a mid to large organisation who have invested [read more]
Want to Achieve Excellence in Digital Transformation?
Gain the knowledge and develop the expertise to become an expert in Digital Transformation. Our frameworks are based on the thought leadership of leading consulting firms, academics, and recognized subject matter experts. Click here for full details.
Digital Transformation is being embraced by organizations of all sizes across most industries. In the Digital Age today, technology creates new opportunities and fundamentally transforms businesses in all aspects—operations, business models, strategies. It not only enables the business, but also drives its growth and can be a source of Competitive Advantage.
For many industries, COVID-19 has accelerated the timeline for Digital Transformation Programs by multiple years. Digital Transformation has become a necessity. Now, to survive in the Low Touch Economy—characterized by social distancing and a minimization of in-person activities—organizations must go digital. This includes offering digital solutions for both employees (e.g. Remote Work, Virtual Teams, Enterprise Cloud, etc.) and customers (e.g. E-commerce, Social Media, Mobile Apps, etc.).
Learn about our Digital Transformation Best Practice Frameworks here.
Readers of This Article Are Interested in These Resources
170-page PDF document
The "Deliver Business Value with IT" series provides a good overview and actionable material of the ways a CIO can provide valuable and effective support to your company strategy and leverages business model concepts to deliver business value from IT. Martin Palmgren propose an extremely [read more]
|
|
Excel workbook
|
|
Excel workbook
| |||
About Shane Avron
Shane Avron is a freelance writer, specializing in business, general management, enterprise software, and digital technologies. In addition to Flevy, Shane's articles have appeared in Huffington Post, Forbes Magazine, among other business journals.
