When To Choose Bare Metal Over Cloud: Key Scenarios

Sometimes choosing between bare metal and cloud can be a difficult, finely-judged decision. Other times, however, the choice is much easier to make. For example, here are 7 situations where choosing bare metal over cloud is almost a given.

High-performance computing (HPC)

High-performance computing (HPC) is often used for complex tasks such as scientific simulations, data analysis, and complex financial modeling. It therefore requires immense processing power and speed.

Bare metal servers are ideal for HPC because they provide direct access to the hardware without the overhead introduced by virtualization layers found in cloud services. This direct hardware access results in superior computational performance and lower latency, which are critical for HPC tasks.

Furthermore, bare metal servers allow for the customization of hardware configurations tailored to the specific needs of HPC applications, including CPUs, GPUs, and memory. This level of customization and performance optimization is often unattainable in virtualized cloud environments.

High data throughput and storage requirements

Applications that require high data throughput and substantial storage capacity can benefit significantly from bare metal servers. Bare metal servers offer superior input/output (I/O) performance compared to virtualized environments, ensuring that data can be read and written at high speeds.

Additionally, the ability to configure and optimize storage solutions directly on the hardware allows for better management of large datasets, reducing bottlenecks and improving overall system performance.

Bare metal is, therefore, the solution of choice for industries that need robust infrastructure that can process large volumes of data at high speed. Possibly, the most obvious example of this is the streaming video services industry, which needs to handle large volumes of high-resolution video content.

Specialized hardware requirements

Some applications and workloads require specialized hardware configurations that are not readily available in standard cloud environments. For instance, tasks involving artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), or blockchain technology often benefit from specific hardware accelerators like GPUs, TPUs, or FPGA cards.

Bare metal servers allow organizations to deploy and configure these specialized hardware components to precisely meet their performance and workload requirements. This level of hardware customization ensures optimal performance and efficiency, which is often limited or unavailable in virtualized cloud platforms. By leveraging bare metal infrastructure, businesses can harness the full potential of their specialized hardware investments.

Stringent security requirements

Bare metal servers offer physical isolation and dedicated hardware. This eliminates the risk of co-tenancy vulnerabilities present in multi-tenant cloud environments. Organizations have full control over the hardware and software configurations, enabling them to implement robust security measures and compliance protocols.

Additionally, bare metal environments can be tailored to meet specific regulatory standards, ensuring that data sovereignty and privacy requirements are strictly adhered to. This level of control and security customization is often difficult to achieve with standard cloud offerings, even IaaS.

This is why bare metal is generally used in highly-regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare. It’s also used when commercial confidentiality is a major concern, such as for sensitive research and development applications.

Latency-sensitive applications

Bare metal servers provide a direct connection to the hardware, eliminating the virtualization overhead that can introduce latency in cloud environments. This direct access results in faster data processing and reduced response times. These are crucial for applications where every millisecond counts.

Additionally, bare metal servers can be strategically located in proximity to users or data sources to further minimize latency. This is particularly important for applications that require real-time processing and instantaneous data access. These include applications such as online gaming services, financial trading platforms, and real-time data processing systems.

Legacy applications and software licensing

Many organizations rely on legacy applications that are not designed for virtualized or cloud environments. These applications may require specific hardware configurations or may not perform optimally when virtualized. Bare metal servers provide a compatible environment for these legacy systems, ensuring that they run efficiently and reliably.

Additionally, certain software licenses are tied to physical hardware, meaning that moving to a cloud environment could result in compliance issues or increased licensing costs. By keeping these applications on bare metal servers, organizations can avoid these complications and maintain compliance with their software licenses.

Long-term use for consistent workloads

Cloud pricing models are typically based on consumption. This means even the more economical, subscription-based plans, can be expensive for steady-state workloads. On-demand pricing is usually even more expensive, in some cases prohibitively so.

Bare metal servers typically have much higher upfront costs than cloud services. This is probably the single, biggest reason why they are unsuitable for short-term use and/or dynamic workloads.

If, however, businesses need a long-term solution for consistent workloads, the upfront costs of bare metal servers can often be easily justified by their economical operating costs. Moreover, the costs of bare metal servers tend to be highly predictable. This makes financial planning much easier.