Hypervisors Vs Bare Metal Servers: a Beginner’s Guide

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Hypervisors Vs Bare Metal Servers a Beginners
Guide
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Introduction

• If you are an IT professional, you probably know
  that choosing the right hosting infrastructure
  can make or break your IT backbone. At one point
  in your career, you will have to make the
  decision whether to use hypervisors or bare metal
  servers.
• Both options will get the job done albeit
  differently. Each has its own unique
  characteristics that cater to different needs in
  the market.
• A good understanding of how both infrastructures
  operate places you and your company at a better
  position to deploy the right strategies as far as
  hosting is concerned. To help you make an
  informed decision, we have put together a guide
  that explains hypervisors and bare metal in
  detail including their features and associated
  pros and cons.

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Table of Contents

• What is Bare Metal
• Features of Bare Metal.
• What Is A Hypervisor
• Features of Hypervisors.
• Advantages of bare metal.
• Disadvantages of Bare metal.
• Advantages of hypervisors.
• Disadvantages of Hypervisors.

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What is Bare Metal?

• Bare metal refers to a physical server or tenant
  environment ideal for a single person or company.
  With this model, the owner of the metal server is
  virtually the only one with access to the server.
• Its working principle resembles that of a
  dedicated server where the operating system can
  be installed onto the physical server without the
  need for a hypervisor overhead. On top of its
  exemplary performance, bare metal has the ability
  to support varied operating systems, even
  hypervisors.
• Bare metal servers often find use in workloads
  that require a high amount of processing power
  and those that are latency sensitive. For this
  reason, these servers are excellent for projects
  that demand a continuous amount of resources.
  Bare metal servers have impressive speeds
  therefore utilized for workloads that need a fast
  turnaround.
• The actual term, bare metal is primarily used
  to create a distinction between a physically
  dedicated server emanating from a virtualized
  environment and the array of modern cloud hosting
  strategies. Within any given data center, bare
  metal servers are not shared among multiple
  clients.

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Features of Bare Metal

• Single tenant environment Bare metal servers
  cater to one client and cannot be physically
  shared with other customers. This, of course, can
  change if the clients decided to run a separate
  virtualized environment apart from it resulting
  in the creation of a multi-tenant environment.
• Security When it comes to security, nothing
  comes close to dedicated single tenant servers.
  Since each server caters to one client, security
  breaches can only be witnessed if there was
  hacking.
• High processing power Compared to all solutions
  in the market, bare metal servers can handle more
  data.
• Customization capabilities. As the sole owner of
  the server, you can play with all the
  customization options at your disposal. From the
  configuration stage, you can select the
  appropriate component including hardware
  resources, software, panel add-ons and so on. You
  can even throw in a hypervisor into the mix.

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What Is A Hypervisor?

• A hypervisor is an operating system with the
  ability to create virtual machines (VM) inside a
  bare metal infrastructure. With hypervisors, an
  operating system such as Ubuntu, Windows, or
  Debian is directly installed on the server after
  which apps run natively within the OS. When a
  hypervisor and a bare metal server are both
  installed on the OS, the user can play the role
  of a manager and create virtual machines on the
  server.
• The hypervisors purpose is not to run native
  applications but to virtualize workloads into
  isolated virtual machines. This concept allows
  for enhanced reliability and flexibility of
  virtualization.
• Hypervisors are fundamental components in the IT
  backbone because they make it possible for you to
  have a range of virtual machines all functioning
  optimally on one piece of computer hardware.
• Hypervisors were introduced in the 1960s but it
  wasnt until the introduction of Unix and Linux
  that they surged in popularity. These two
  operating systems heavily utilized hypervisors to
  expand their hardware capabilities, improve
  reliability, control costs, and enhance security.

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Features of Hypervisors

• Uses virtual machines Hypervisors use the
  virtualization technology of dividing bare metal
  servers into private servers (VPs)
• Horizontal scalability Ideal for situations that
  demand horizontal scalability and pure
  performance such as high-traffic websites and
  cloud software
• Advanced Virtual Server Security Include more
  features tailored to secure the system and the
  virtual machines. For instance, they have
  software acceptable features that guards against
  unsigned software finding residence in the
  system. They also have integrated firewalls that
  eliminate the need of IP tables and utilize set
  of rules to define every port of access. There
  are enhanced auditing and logging features that
  track every activity in the system in order to
  prevent malicious activities from being erased or
  hidden. Whats more, they also come with Active
  Directory Integration that authenticates users
  who are trying to aces the virtualized servers.
  The only thing that users need to know is the
  fact that all these security features may not
  benefit you that much if you dont deploy and
  configure them according to the recommended or
  proper security guidelines.

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Advantages of bare metal

• As a single tenant server, bare metal resources
  belong to you alone. This means it can only cater
  to one client on the server. However, when one
  server is extremely overloaded with requests,
  system administrators can increase resources by
  adding hardware. A bare metal environment is
  ideal for a wide range of workloads particularly
  those that require access management and granular
  resource with an ability to scale and maintain
  high levels of security.
• There are several advantages that make bare metal
  one of the most preferred hosting infrastructure
  in the world of information technology. These
  include the following
• Security and isolation Baremetal servers are
  security-sensitive. Organizations and individuals
  alike can create a physical separation of
  resources. Although security is a complex and
  broad terminology in cloud computing, using a
  bare metal server over other hosting options
  enhances security substantially.

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• More processing power Thanks to the limited
  access offered by bare metal servers, no one can
  tamper with your projects stability meaning your
  server will have higher processing power.
• Keeps costs predictable Bare metal hosting
  servers can do a number on your wallet but you
  can predict this cost since it is billed on a
  monthly basis. You can also opt for other billing
  options such as hourly or weekly plans but the
  bottom line is that you will know ahead of time
  how much you are expected to pay for using
  hosting servers.
• Better service By eliminating the noisy
  neighbor syndrome, you get a better quality of
  service. Technically, a client can hold someone
  responsible if something wrong on the system.
• Flexibility With bare metal, server
  configurations can be quite precise. You can
  combine both hypervisors and bare metal servers
  for enhanced performance.

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• Lower overhead costs Compared to virtualization
  platforms, bare metal servers incur less
  overhead. The reason is that hypervisors utilize
  the servers processing power on a higher scale.
  Less overhead means increased speed and improved
  responsiveness. Bare metal also gives room for
  more hardware customization which further
  enhances speed and responsiveness of the system.
• An affordable solution for data transfer When it
  comes to outbound data transfer, bare metal is
  always the most cost-effective option on the
  table. You can get several free data transfer
  terabytes on certain dedicated servers which is
  not the case with other virtualized environments.
  However, always keep in mind that these scenarios
  are heavily dependent upon the offers in
  question. Also, theres never any guarantee of
  partnership.

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Disadvantages of Bare metal

• Like all hosting infrastructure options, bare
  metal has a few disadvantages
• Instance limitations When compared to
  virtualized instances, bare metal servers have
  restrictions regarding the types and sizes of
  instances available.
• Backup challenges Hypervisors capture snapshots
  of the VMs memory space allowing for ease of
  backup. Bare metal servers dont have this
  feature. Duplicating machine images to be used as
  the backup and can be quite difficult to do.
  Additionally, bare metal doesnt support recovery
  from tape drives unless the tape drives and the
  BMR software are from the same manufacturer.
• Complexity Bare metal processes can be intensive
  often relying on a third party operating system
  to make configurations.

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Advantages of hypervisors

• What if you dont have the luxury of being a
  single tenant as in a bare metal model? Perhaps
  you handle a dynamic workload and need to utilize
  resources round the clock. Hypervisors, too, have
  quite a huge number of benefits particularly for
  workloads that need to be run and spun for a
  relatively short period of time before turning
  them off.
• Quick scalability If you need more server space,
  a hypervisor can easily grant you additional
  servers in no time.
• Ease of backup Virtual machines allow for a
  smooth and seamless backup protection compared to
  traditional applications. The process of securing
  a backup is complicated and time-consuming hence
  can cause serious downtime. With VMs, snapshots
  of data can be captured and saved in record time
  making the process easier and manageable.

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• Improved mobility The VMs structure has been
  designed in a way that it operates independently
  separate from the underlying hardware. This
  enables it to have the ability to roambetween
  local and remote servers that have an abundance
  of resources.
• Optimization of hardware Hypervisors have the
  ability to optimize hardware to a greater extent.
  It allows virtual machines to run on their own by
  dividing resources into separate entities. In
  addition, with virtualized servers, hypervisors
  make VMs super mobile to a level that the
  underlying hardware is rendered irrelevant.
• Security Virtual environments are quite secure
  too. Even if the virtual instances havent been
  physically separated, they are technically
  isolated from each other. Sure, they may be on
  the same server but they have no knowledge of
  each other. So yes, the noisy neighbor effect may
  be witnessed but the hypervisors are secure.

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Disadvantages of Hypervisors

• Some of the reasons some people shy away from
  using virtualized environments include the
  following
• High implementation cost Creating a virtual
  environment requires the purchase of both
  hardware and software. Other times, devices may
  need to be manufactured, developed or purchased
  in order to implement the infrastructure.
• Availability issues People and organizations who
  utilize virtualization often worry about what
  will happen to their data in the event that their
  assets are unavailable. If this were to happen,
  the organizations might struggle to maintain
  their positions in the industry. Theres also the
  issue of third-party providers making the control
  of data almost impossible.
• Requires cohesiveness of all links Being the
  sole tenant means you are in full control of your
  operations. With virtualization, you dont have
  such control because there are quite a number of
  links required to work seamlessly to achieve one
  goal. If one of the links is compromised, the
  entire server will not function optimally.

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Bottom line

• When all is said and done, theres no straight
  answer to the question of which hosting
  infrastructure to employ for your organization.
  Every situation is unique. Every project has a
  different set of requirements. Both bare metal
  servers and hypervisors have their pros and cons
  it all boils down to what your organization needs
  at the time.
• Bare metal servers offer all the performance
  benefits of physical dedicated servers without
  the contract. They cost way less than virtualized
  environments, have better speeds, higher
  processing power and have better flexibility. If
  your business involves collecting vast amounts of
  data over a short period of time, then you
  certainly want to go the beta metal servers way.
  
• Hypervisors, on the other hand, are great if you
  are not after the elite performance displayed by
  bare metal servers. If your goal is to utilize
  resources and consolidate infrastructure in one
  computer hardware but still achieve high levels
  of performance, virtualization is definitely the
  best option for you.
• With virtual environments, you can enjoy a high
  latency, reduced overall costs, mobility and the
  ability to scale up and or down depending on the
  requirements at hand. Still, you can create a
  hybrid solution that ensures you get the best of
  both worlds and ultimately maximize your RIO.

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The End
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