Choosing the right infrastructure is critical for demanding workloads, where every bit of performance matters. For applications requiring maximum throughput, minimal latency, and consistent performance without hypervisor overhead, bare metal servers stand out as a top-tier option. Unlike virtualized instances where resources are shared, bare metal provides exclusive access to the underlying hardware.
This dedicated access translates directly into superior performance characteristics. You get the full power of the CPUs, RAM, and local storage, uninhibited by shared resources or hypervisor layers. This is particularly beneficial for workloads like high-performance databases, large in-memory caches, analytics, HPC simulations, and applications with strict licensing requirements tied to physical cores or sockets.
When evaluating cloud options offering bare metal, the key performance factors to consider include the raw power of the available server configurations, the speed and type of storage offered (like local NVMe SSDs), and the network connectivity available, especially for clustered applications sensitive to inter-node latency. The ability to bypass virtualization overhead provides a predictable performance profile, eliminating the “noisy neighbor” issue sometimes encountered in multi-tenant virtualized environments.
Ultimately, selecting bare metal is a strategic decision driven by the need for peak, consistent performance and direct hardware control. While virtualized cloud instances offer flexibility and scalability for many tasks, bare metal remains the benchmark for workloads where uncompromised speed and hardware-level optimization are paramount. Evaluating providers on the specifics of their bare metal offerings – from processor generations and memory configurations to storage and networking capabilities – is essential to ensure the infrastructure meets the highest performance demands of critical enterprise applications.
Source: https://www.redswitches.com/blog/bare-metal-gcp-vs-aws/
