Hosting and maintaining a bare metal server can be expensive. On top of that, running on-premise bare metal servers can be woefully inefficient, especially if you can’t afford the capital investment required to create a fully-fledged data center. Yet, you don’t have to build a data center to host your bare-metal server(s). Instead, you can turn to bare-metal colocation providers, also known as colos.
This article talks about bare-metal colocation, its advantages, and more. Come along.
What is Bare-Metal Colocation?
Bare-metal colocation, at its core, involves deploying workloads directly on servers hosted in a colocation facility. Sure, you can deploy workloads via virtual machines (VMs) in a colocation center. The problem, however, is that you’ll need to refactor the hypervisor to enable the VMs to access the server’s physical hardware. Bare-metal colocation seeks to solve this somewhat inefficient setup.
More specifically, the bare metal infrastructure allows you to deploy workloads directly on your servers without the need to refactor the hypervisor to expose the underlying bare-metal resources, thereby optimizing performance. The bare-metal infrastructure is ideal for deploying workloads that require higher utilization of a physical machine.
Public Cloud for Bare-Metal
Apart from colocation data centers, you can also leverage public cloud infrastructure for bare-metal workloads deployment.
Advantages using a bare metal cloud server include:
– Deploying workloads is straightforward
– You only pay for what you use, typically the hours your servers are running
– You can manage your bare-metal servers with the same tools you use to control your virtual machines
Benefits of Bare-Metal Colocation
Indeed, you can use a bare-metal cloud solution to deploy your bare-metal workloads. However, there are several reasons you’d want to work with colocation providers instead.
These include:
Wider Selection
You don’t have many bare-metal server options with the public cloud. Inversely, you can run any type of bare metal server in a colocation center. All you need to do is set up and manage your server.
Also, outsourcing bare-metal server hosting to a colocation service can free up your IT capacity. That way, your organization can focus on research and development instead of wasting time troubleshooting the infrastructure regularly.
Flexibility
Hosting your bare-metal server in a colocation facility gives you the freedom to manage your server as per your specific needs. Public cloud, on the other hand, doesn’t offer all the tools you need for absolute control of your servers.
Further, you can agree on terms with your colo to allow you to scale your services as your needs evolve.
This flexibility allows you to make long-term plans without having to blow your budget on capital investments.
You Can Leverage Bare-metal-as-a-service
Bare-metal-as-a-service is a model in which a vendor deploys dedicated bare-metal infrastructure to the customer’s data center with the same on-demand agility, convenience, and scalability of a cloud service.
That way, you get to experience the speed and scalability of the public cloud, on one hand, the security and security of colocation on the other.
Better Uptime Reliability
Hosting your bare-metal servers on-premise doesn’t always result in uptime reliability due to problems such as insufficient power.
Since system downtime can hurt your organization’s bottom line and reputation, it makes perfect sense to turn to a colocation facility with more reliable infrastructure.
While uptime reliability can vary from provider to provider, a data center with more than 99.99999% uptime reliability, for example, experiences less than 4 seconds of downtime throughout the year.
No-refactoring Needed
Bare-metal colocation allows you to run your non-virtualized application in a hypervisor environment without re-factoring the hypervisor in a virtualized environment.
How to Choose a Bare-metal Colocation Provider
Of course, there are many colocation providers out there. However, some aren’t worth your attention. So, before you engage in a colocation service, be sure to consider the following:
Core Competency
The expertise required to run bare-metal and multi-tenant cloud environments varies significantly. Choose a provider that can show hands-on experience in bare-metal cloud computing and colocation. You’ll want to analyze the provider’s history, customer base, and the diverse workloads it has managed. Check customer references. Also, ask for examples of how the service handled specific client needs.
Configuration Options
You want to partner with a colocation service that offers the broadest bare-metal configurations. That way, you won’t be trapped in a company that can’t scale to meet your needs or one that offers more computing power than you require.
Location
A good location means an optimized bare-metal infrastructure and application environment. It also implies that you can reach your entire audience. On the other hand, a poor location can result in inefficiency and unstable connection. When choosing a data center location, make sure it is strategic enough to enable you to control your operations and understand your customers.
Resiliency
You’re better off with a bare-metal colocation provider that offers redundant networking, power backup, and other resources that can boost the resiliency of workloads hosted in the facility.
In addition, choose a colocation facility that offers disaster recovery services to enable you to restore the disrupted environments. Indeed, you want to partner with a provider whose data center can hold against disasters such as hurricanes and floods.
Interconnect
Sure, all bare-metal colocation facilities offer high-performing network connectivity solutions. However, their interconnect options differ in performance and diversity.
So, if you require specific types of networking solutions – for example, connect to collocated bare-metal infrastructure to a specific public cloud – you’ll want to consider the provider’s interconnect package before signing up.
The Bottom Line
If your workload runs on bare metal, it is time to consider using collocate bare metal servers. Sure, public cloud solutions have their advantages. However, bare-metal colocation is an excellent option, especially if you want to leverage the flexibility and security of bare-metal colocation infrastructure.
Get started with Volico Bare-Metal Colocation Services
Colocation and Bare-Metal Services with Volico, you can colocate your existing equipment and leverage our bare-metal servers for your specialized workloads. At Volico, we offer several Bare Metal Dedicated Server options to fit any business need. Make sure to check them out!
Whether you want a bare metal or a classic public cloud server, contact a Volico professional today to discuss your requirements and set up the best hosting server for your business. Volico’s Bare Metal Servers are designed to meet a broad range of workload needs. It’s available in various configurations with varying numbers of cores, RAM, CPU, Storage, OS, and more.
• Call: 888 865 4261
• Chat with a member of our team to discuss which solution best fits your needs.
