So, you’re interested in bare metal virtualization and Cloud hosting? The only problem is you don’t have an IT guy on staff to determine what type of virtualization technology you should use to power your Cloud hosting needs. No problem. For you, the new to bare metal virtualization software client, we are going to break down what bare metal means, what types of virtualization are on the marketing and how bare metal virtualization for your Cloud solutions work.
What is Bare Metal?
As the name suggests, bare metal refers to a bare hypervisor, i.e. computer, without an operating system running on the machine. As the term suggests, the metal, i.e. the hypervisor or machine, is without an operating system. Thus, it is bare. A bare metal hypervisor is designed to operate directly on the hosting company’s hardware so it can control hardware needs along with overseeing and managing the guest operating system.
This leads us to virtualization.
What is Virtualization?
Virtualization is the technology which allows computing resources and operating systems to operate in a virtual environment. Virtualized computing resources include RAM, Bandwidth, Disk Space and CPU Cores. Virtualized operating systems include anything from the Linux or Windows platform.
Within Cloud virtualization services, there are multiple major technologies which provide Cloud Computing virtualized environments. Some of those technologies are Xen, KVM, VMWare OpenVZ and Hyper V. The difference between virtualization technologies needed to deploy Cloud environments stems from price, speed and reliability.
Is Bare Metal Virtualization the Only Path to the Cloud?
No. While bare metal virtualization software is popular for hosting companies dealing in Cloud services, another Cloud Computing deployment option is a hosted hypervisor. As the name suggests, the machine isn’t bare. Rather, to deploy the Cloud, it utilizes a standard operating system environment with the hypervisor and guest operating system functioning at multiple levels above the machine.
Should I Use Bare Metal Virtualization?
It all depends on need and skill set. If you are the IT type – if you know what a null route is and know what blackhole filtering is good for – than yes, bare metal virtualization might be good for you. However, we have to say, although a bare metal virtual machine is good for the IT equipped, a hosted hypervisor works just as well.
The real question here isn’t should I use bare metal virtualization but if you want to manage your Cloud computing services or not. If you are going to manage your Cloud solutions, by all means, make the most of a bare metal virtual machine. On the other hand, if you aren’t going to manage your hypervisors, it isn’t going to matter to you if your provider uses bare metal Xen or bare metal VMWare. For you, the managed Cloud hosting server client, as long as your Cloud deployment works, you aren’t going to care about the type of virtualization your provider uses.
This leads us to our next topic, bare metal server hosting. As with any product, many companies offer the same solution. Bare metal server hosting is no different. In part two, we are going to take a quick look at some of the providers who currently supply bare metal web hosting to the market.
You can find part two here, “Bare Metal Server Hosting Provider Guide”.