The Role of Bare Metal Clouds in Supporting Big Data and AI Applications

The days of physically working to collect useful data are gone; today, most companies have more data than they can efficiently process. The good news is that with the correct setup and enough processing power, they can consistently receive and store global data. As a result, it is not surprising that applications that use bare metal cloud solutions are finding favor in both the private and public sectors.

This article will provide an answer to the question “What is a bare metal cloud?”, describe the role of bare metal cloud environments in supporting big data and AI applications, and explain the importance of choosing the right bare metal cloud provider. 

What Is Bare Metal Cloud?

A bare metal cloud is a non-virtualized environment with a single tenant that keeps the full self-service flexibility of the cloud while enabling you to make use of all the computational power of the physical server’s hardware.

In contrast to conventional cloud services that use a virtual server utilized by multiple tenants, bare metal clouds are single-tenant and there is no additional overhead associated with running a hypervisor. Because of this, bare metal solutions can decrease latency issues and provide a boost in performance, making them perfect for demanding workloads, including AI applications and big data processing. 

Benefits of Bare Metal Cloud

Organizations can gain a wide range of advantages from bare metal cloud systems. Here are a few examples:

Resource control. Since you are the only user of your bare metal cloud, you have full control over the resources. This means that resources don’t need to be divided and you can optimize them for different demanding workloads. 

Security. Greater security is another benefit of dedicated bare-metal servers, which is crucial for businesses where compliance and security are top priorities. Bare metal clouds prevent the possibility of sensitive data exposure to other tenants because resources are segregated and customers have complete control over the system.

Cost savings. When you are using a bare metal cloud, there are no physical assets that require maintenance or replacement. Also, with the pay-per-use pricing approach, you may purchase what you require when you require it and avoid overspending on infrastructure, storage space, and hardware.  

Scalability. Bare metal services are very scalable thanks to their cloud architecture. You can quickly and easily provision or decommission server resources through the provider’s administrative interface to fulfill any new business requirement.

Bare Metal Cloud vs Other Types of Clouds

The most commonly used types of cloud deployment include virtual private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud. Even though each type has its own advantages and drawbacks, bare metal cloud happens to stick out among its peers when it comes to expandability and speed. Another benefit is that it is easily integrable with all other types.

Bare metal vs private cloud

Private clouds are powered off-site on rented equipment and, similar to bare metal clouds, offer an isolated single-tenant environment. However, some configurations offer network-level isolation, which the bare metal cloud does not support. Although both types of cloud use a dedicated server and tangible, material resources to provide higher performance, bare metal cloud servers are less expensive to maintain and easier to grow.

Bare metal vs public cloud

A public cloud is a cloud setting where users share the resources of a single physical machine. Unlike public clouds, bare metal clouds are not virtualized environments and don’t permit resource sharing among different users. Access to network, storage, and computing resources is unrestricted. Bare metal clouds offer direct hardware access, quick server provisioning, scalability, and hourly pricing are all features of the bare metal cloud. Some of the most popular public cloud options include IBM Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Oracle Cloud. 

Bare metal vs hybrid cloud

This type of cloud is a hybrid environment that combines the agility and speed of public cloud services with the security and improved performance of private cloud services. Bare metal cloud eliminates any drawbacks both private and public clouds may have by providing the speedy performance of specialized physical hardware which you would get on a flexible pay-per-use public cloud architecture. 

Benefits of Bare Metal Clouds for Big Data Applications

As we mentioned at the beginning, modern businesses collect, store, and analyze massive amounts of data on a daily basis. Luckily, the performance and practicality of bare metal clouds enable them to build environments that are up to the challenge. Here are some of the most important benefits of bare metal clouds for big data applications:

Improved security and privacy

In the big data world, security is taken very seriously, so it makes sense that you would need to pick your infrastructure carefully. When it comes to data analytics workloads that require enhanced security and robust infrastructure, a bare metal cloud is an ideal option. With bare metal cloud infrastructure, provisioning is still entirely automated, but there is no underlying virtualization layer. All bare metal systems are single-tenant, and you are the sole owner of the machine. Being the only user means fewer security threats, with less hardware overuse and hypervisor overhead. 

In addition, when working with sensitive data, you need to store and manage PII (personally identifiable information) while adhering to legal requirements. Moreover, you can also be required by law to have a private infrastructure and an isolated environment. A bare metal cloud is a great option due to its single-tenant nature. 

Cheaper data transfer

When your data set is large, you try to keep your computations as close as possible to the location of the data because transferring computation is less expensive than moving data. On bare metal clouds, you may transport data into and out to the Internet for as little as $1 per terabyte, whereas hyper-scale providers offer prices that range from $50 to over $100 per terabyte.

Extra edge

Finally, by running your big data on bare metal devices you gain an extra edge. RESTful API enables rapid scaling up and down of servers, which is essential for the operation of distributed systems. You can run your application at its full capacity and still have consistent and smooth workloads without virtualization or overbooked hardware.

Bare Metal Clouds for AI Applications

Artificial intelligence projects are inherently resource-intensive due to the massive data sets and the requirement to analyze large amounts of unstructured data using advanced mathematical models. This means that a maximum level of computational power and performance is required, which makes bare metal’s dedicated server and resources perfect for AI and machine learning.

Machine learning is a branch of AI that gives computers the ability to learn on their own by sifting through data and understanding its context to make predictions and identify patterns with the least amount of human involvement. Businesses of various industries are increasingly turning to ML to handle real-time data analytics challenges that were previously too difficult, expensive, or time-consuming to handle manually.

Machine learning is used by thousands of businesses to automatically make decisions that increase the effectiveness of daily operations. These routine tasks include identifying suspicious activity, improving marketing, and customer service, making accurate medical diagnoses, etc. 

For instance, bare metal clouds are very effective at scaling up activities involving complicated algorithms and NLP (natural language processing). Machine learning algorithms and artificial intelligence applications can take advantage of these additional resources. This is one of the more inventive and cutting-edge applications of bare metal’s cloud performance and flexibility advantages.

The Bottom Line

Using bare metal clouds, machine learning and AI can take advantage of root-level access to optimize server resources. In addition, because there is no need for extra virtualization costs, bare metal cloud systems are perfect for big data processing.

With EdgeUno’s bare metal infrastructure as a service, you are in complete control! EdgeUno is a bare metal cloud provider that offers custom, ready-to-go bare metal systems in more than 36 data centers in South America. We provide top performance, security, and privacy, along with transparent and straightforward pricing to meet all your processing and storage requirements. Contact us today to learn more about our bare metal products.