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IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers

Overview

What is IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers?

IBM Cloud bare metal servers are cloud servers configurable in hourly/monthly options, on-demand, from any location—with a selection of standard features and services for small businesses and enterprise demands. Users can customize RAM and SSDs with 11M+ configurations from which…

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Recent Reviews

IBM server in shell

8 out of 10
December 20, 2022
Incentivized
we deploy cloud based application on the IBM cloud bare metal servers for cloud communications, different kind off applications works in …
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IBM Cloud VPC - Review

8 out of 10
December 16, 2022
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In one of our projects where we had to create a setup of a virtual desktop infrastructure, which was to be created on VMWare, So, due to …
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Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 9 features
  • Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime (77)
    9.0
    90%
  • Security controls (74)
    8.8
    88%
  • Operating system support (76)
    8.6
    86%
  • Monitoring tools (70)
    8.4
    84%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Video Reviews

1 video

User Review: Long Time User Impressed with IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers' Quality Support
02:23
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Pricing

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IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers

starting at $0.51

Cloud
per hour

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers

starting at $241.00

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://cloud.ibm.com/gen1/infrastructu…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Features

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

IaaS provides the basic building blocks for an IT infrastructure like servers, storage, and networking, in an on-demand model over the Internet

8.6
Avg 8.1
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Product Details

What is IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers?

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers are single-tenant, dedicated servers that can be deployed and managed as cloud services. They are part of IBM Cloud and are available in either classic or VPC deployment models.


IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers on VPC Infrastructure are dedicated bare metal servers that provide enhanced networking and connectivity via virtual private cloud (VPC) capabilities. They’re available now as an integrated part of IBM Cloud.


IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers on IBM Cloud Classic Infrastructure are presented as ideal for large, steady state, predictable operations that rely on traditional cloud networking. IBM Cloud Bare Metal Server can be customized with over 11 million different configuration combinations. IBM includes 20 TB of bandwidth. Pay-as-you-use with hourly, monthly, or reserved billing at prices set for cost management. CPU technology from Intel® Xeon® , and AMD EPYC™ , and add the latest NVIDIA Tesla GPUs are available.

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers Features

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Features

  • Supported: Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
  • Supported: Dynamic scaling
  • Supported: Elastic load balancing
  • Supported: Pre-configured templates
  • Supported: Monitoring tools
  • Supported: Pre-defined machine images
  • Supported: Operating system support
  • Supported: Security controls

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers Screenshots

Screenshot of ConfiguringScreenshot of Bandwidth ProvisioningScreenshot of Remote ManagementScreenshot of Firmware Management

IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationMobile Web

Frequently Asked Questions

IBM Cloud bare metal servers are cloud servers configurable in hourly/monthly options, on-demand, from any location—with a selection of standard features and services for small businesses and enterprise demands. Users can customize RAM and SSDs with 11M+ configurations from which to choose.

Alibaba Cloud ECS Bare Metal Servers, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and Rackspace Managed Hosting are common alternatives for IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers.

Reviewers rate Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime highest, with a score of 9.

The most common users of IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(178)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-3 of 3)
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Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Being used as our primary production for our Web Apps, Internal Facing Apps, and our database warehouse.
  • Quick Deployment
  • Wide global footprint
  • Many auxiliary services beyond servers
  • Downtime!
  • Limited availability in certain markets
  • Some outdated documentation
Development, USA presence, and single source provider solutions are great for IBM Bluemix. You will need to establish DR locations as the uptime is not up to standards.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
41.25%
4.1
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
60%
6.0
Dynamic scaling
N/A
N/A
Elastic load balancing
N/A
N/A
Pre-configured templates
N/A
N/A
Monitoring tools
90%
9.0
Pre-defined machine images
N/A
N/A
Operating system support
90%
9.0
Security controls
90%
9.0
  • Per server costs are down
  • Accessibility is up
  • Downtime has increased
Not all applications make sense in cloud, which is why it is nice to have access to bare metal solutions as well as cloud based solutions. We achieve operational efficiency by keeping our 24hr / 365 day workloads and compute needs on bare metal
It is on par with other solutions when comparing servers of equal size.
The servers themselves are a commodity product. Dell is Dell, HP is HP. When comparing vendors for this service, you are looking at price, SLA, and easy of use for support.
  • IBM Cloud Virtual Servers
  • IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
  • IBM Cloud Internet Services
Being able to have the same services on the same vendor allows for a smoother integration and some cost efficiencies. However this adds some risk with DR and emergency planning.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Microsoft Azure, Rackspace Cloud Hosting
For the most part, implementation of IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers went smoothly, however we learned that the location you select will greatly impact the quality of service and availability. Several data center locations are being decommissioned (they are older / legacy from previous acquisitions) and others are simply at capacity. Strongly suggest confirming with their technical folks regarding capacity planning before starting a migration or implementation.
No
We did not use IBM professional services to deploy and instead used our own technical staff. All went smooth in the data centers where there was capacity.
Basic (free)
We have technical staff in house which are intimately familiar and comfortable with cloud and remote environments. Therefore the basic level is almost always enough for us. The biggest downfall to the basic level is the mean time to respond. Ideally all tickets should be triaged based on severity, not by how much is paid to IBM.
We were migrating from one type of high availability firewall to a newer more capable kind. Doing so traditionally would involved either downtime or having our environment exposed with no firewall protection. The IBM Support team was able to closely coordinate times (not a 9-5 window) and help us generate a process so that when the new firewalls spun up traffic was blocked by default.
  • IBM Cloud Docs
  • Ability to check uptime status for IBM Cloud products
  • IBM Cloud product demos and tutorial videos
Ehh. Because of the sheer breath of services, the documentation was usually only mildly helpful and many times out of date. We've had the most success using live chat or calling in.
The support is decent and in an emergency they will help you if you make enough noise. However the creation of "class of customers" within the IBM ecosystem I think is a step backwards as it can put emergencies on the back burner simply because we didn't pay enough in monthly fees.
No
  • Price
When buying bare metal its all about price and SLA
It wouldn't change. Bare metal is a simple procurement process.
No. Found it unnecessary most of time since reboots and KVM is self service.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers to support online gamers on some platforms (frontend and backend) and provide a backend for the game hosted on other platforms. I've used IBM Cloud Server for 12 years starting from the time it was Softlayer. I hosted it in a couple of datacenters so far. I use Microsoft Windows and MSSQL Server software.
  • Good quality support
  • Good quality of hardware
  • Transparency about technical issues, security issues
  • The new IBM cloud customer site is not convenient
  • Relatively high prices of hardware and bandwidth
  • Relatively high prices for storage
  • Not flexible server storage configuration (SSD options related)
Scenarios where IBM Cloud Servers are well suited: 1. When you need a backend server with database to handle many simultaneous users online. 2. When you need robust solution with high quality support. 3. When you need server based in many different locations around the world Scenarios where IBM Cloud Servers are less appropriate: 1. When you need a corporate server with low number of users. 2. When you would not need high quality support. 3. Relatively small budget.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
47.5%
4.8
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
90%
9.0
Dynamic scaling
60%
6.0
Elastic load balancing
N/A
N/A
Pre-configured templates
N/A
N/A
Monitoring tools
70%
7.0
Pre-defined machine images
N/A
N/A
Operating system support
80%
8.0
Security controls
80%
8.0
  • It's higher price but you get better quality
  • Good and fast support
  • Overall your risk is lower with IBM Cloud Metal servers
I used IBM Cloud Metal servers for 12 years (from the times it was Softlayer). I used it for intensive applications and games with tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of users online. I use Microsoft Windows and MSSQL database server with large databases. So far IBM Cloud Metal Servers had proven to provide robust solution.
I have used IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers for 12 years so my experience of using alternatives maybe outdated. I moved however to another datacenter once and the experience was good. The servers provisioning is fast and configurations are flexible.
I have used IBM Cloud Metal Servers for 12 years and have not used alternatives during this period of time.
  • IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
I use IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers only.
I use regular support and it is very effective and works pretty well. I can tell that professional and effective support is one of the competitive advantages of IBM cloud bare metal servers.
Once I had to move my server to another datacenter within IBM cloud bare metal servers network. I got an exceptional support through this complicated process.
Jonathan Geller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers were being used at all levels of our infrastructure. The uniqueness of IBM's offering bridges hardware and global networks into a nice package. IBM is unique as it has the ability to bind IP addresses that can float across any data center region to allow for fault-tolerant applications bound by a static IP regardless of geographic location. IBM's [and formerly Softlayer's] global private network allows for data centers to interact and communicate between regions without requiring VPN or other networking tools. Allowing your application to scale globally while physically limiting intra-networking on a private VLAN prevents many other challenges of securing private data. [I feel] in the telecom space, port 5060 SIP is a widely known and 'attackable' port. While you want to allow your customers access wherever they may be, keeping 'bad actors' away can be a challenge at scale. Our platform was physically built for the IBM Cloud to scale within its private network, keeping the intra-workings between all components private while only allowing known customers access on an independent transport bound to an IP that could self-heal and migrate into any global region on the IBM Cloud autonomously.
  • Unique relationship with hardware manufacturer Lenovo
  • Global SoftLayer IP network very unique to IBM
  • Deployment of servers were quite fast (within 24 hours)
  • Support team was responsive, until [in my experience,] it wasn't.
  • Ongoing special pricing / sales on bare metal servers
  • Device cataloging including firmware revision dates.
  • [In my experience, the] Customer Service Agreement (CSA) has many gaps in terms of responsibility with Bare Metal Servers.
  • [I believe] IBM should be deploying servers and firmware updating all components before providing them to customers to prevent component failure.
  • [I feel] IBM needs lots of improvement with their legacy VPN to access IMPI management tools. The level of security of it is unparalleled when it works. Having access to KVM / IPMI is critical for any business, and when their VPN service is not working.
  • [From my experiences,] IBM deployed faulty hardware, or failed to update firmware per Lenovo notices, only to pass off blame.
  • [In my opinion,] IBM's General Counsel and Paralegal held our data/company hostage when components failed, [in my experience] to IBM "gross negligence" (in their words), only to release it if we were to limit damages to $1,000.
IBM Cloud [Bare Metal Servers] (formerly Softlayer) is positioned to gain compute when graduating from virtual environments such as the other clouds. No other provider can offer what IBM has today. Global secure & roaming IP's are not found anywhere else at this level. [I feel] IBM has a big responsibility to ensure they maintain their hardware/components given the types of customers who chose IBM and who [in my experience] are willing to pay 5x - 10x the price of Bare Metal Servers compared to other offerings.
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) (8)
5%
0.5
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime
10%
1.0
Dynamic scaling
10%
1.0
Elastic load balancing
N/A
N/A
Pre-configured templates
N/A
N/A
Monitoring tools
10%
1.0
Pre-defined machine images
N/A
N/A
Operating system support
N/A
N/A
Security controls
10%
1.0
  • [I feel] IBM caused significant damages to their acknowledged "gross negligence." [...] [In my opinion,] holding customers/data hostage to limit gross negligence is an extremely poor practice.
  • [With my experiences,] our investment was a tremendous loss in time & resources. Their lack of support, [in my opinion,] has caused us to pivot our entire business model and revenue stream. Our product re-launch has been setback by ~18 months due to damages caused by [in my experience, to be] IBM's gross negligence.
The machines performed quite well while working until they didn't [in my experience].

While base servers start at very high performance, offloading application workloads into IBM Cloud would be beneficial. Keeping in mind the cost of [computing] is greater than other vendors. The benefit of offloading workload in the IBM Cloud should be calculated based on its dependency on other network of specialty driven capability of IBM Cloud.

Compute performance does not have benefit over other compute offerings based on price alone.
[In my experience,] this is not the case [and] provisioning took at least 8 hours the first time. [In my experience,] over 16 hours when [the] system failed and had to [rebuilt.] There may be new provisions in place due to our event that requires firmware updating on all components before delivery which now can take machines to be provisioned in far longer times. [I feel] there is no 2-4 hour delivery time.

One new server we deployed took, [in our experience] almost 48 hours to deliver, however, we experienced boot failures and were only able to get into the operating system while selecting the boot disk device manually at start up. This means in the event of a failure or reboot, the system would not recover to OS. IBM helpdesk made bios adjustments beyond what is allowed within the IMPI management, however, the system never booted properly. Had to cancel months later.


IBM brings the full suite, and coupled with Bare Metal, developing within the IBM / Softlayer SDK's and keeping smtp mail delivery, CDN, data block/object storage all from one place is simple. We were also evaluating DNS via Cloudflare before we departed IBM Cloud services.
There are clear advantages and risks when using multiple products with a single vendor. Some advantages are:
  • Speed and cost of data object storage between Bare Metal vs external suck as S3
  • Single management portal
  • Single key/token via SDK for API or management
  • Familiar experience
Amazon Route 53, Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service), DigitalOcean Droplets, Bandwidth
Implementation on some equipment was smooth. [In my experience,] deployment time always exceeded advertised time. In one instance, our server deployment took almost 48 hours when (2-4 hour deployment time was advertised). However [it] never booted correctly and after several attempts to have IBM support repair, we had to cancel those servers.

I believe deployment times have been updated more accurately now to reflect 24-48 hour deployment times.
No
We did not purchase additional support initially, however on future servers, we did add premium support and insurance.
[In my experience,] No.
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