The professional service provider that you need if you need to go bare metal
September 04, 2020
The professional service provider that you need if you need to go bare metal
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
We started using this service around 2012 as a solution to host multiple websites, when SoftLayer was not yet part of IBM. We use this service exclusively for this purpose. This service solves our necessity to host multiple websites on a secure environment. We use 5 bare metal servers for this purpose.
- Professional and proactive tech support.
- Great performance on servers.
- Nice interface to manage the infrastructure and services.
- Sometimes Chat support is not very useful.
- Some services are expensive if you compare them with cloud infrastructure.
- This service helps us to have a professional hosting service in less than a week.
- We had to get quality hardware in a professional managed data center. The cost was higher than if we had had an in-house solution, but totally worth it.
- The higher cost vs cloud was a factor to switch to another cloud provider.
We started our journey on this service looking for a professional web hosting service. As time passed, we used one server to host a Kaltura Open server, which transcoded and served video files. And it worked perfectly. The performance in the servers in general was always great.
Other server that had intensive usage was a Database server, that served more than 20 different databases for several websites and it worked perfect, even on heavy load times.
Other server that had intensive usage was a Database server, that served more than 20 different databases for several websites and it worked perfect, even on heavy load times.
That is fast compared with other services. We used to wait up to a week on other providers to get a server deployed. When we first contacted the service (circa 2012), we were in awe of the speed they managed to provision a new server.
That speed also applies to the provision of new additional services (for example dedicated firewall).
That speed also applies to the provision of new additional services (for example dedicated firewall).
- Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Cloud vs Bare Metal is a tough call. We chose EC2 to move our solution from IBM because we needed more flexibility. I believe that the choice of one or the other solution must be thought through very carefully. Neither of those is heaven. For us, the change comes in the necessity to have more websites available and to support more web technologies, for example, ElasticSearch.
Bare Metal doesn't have the flexibility of the cloud, that's a given, but sometimes it's better.
On a Bare Metal infrastructure, it requires you to request a new server and configure it, which is not always easy, especially if you want to just test some tech. That's the point when Cloud was big win for us. We can test it without needing to set up a server on our own.
But, if you need a more permanent application, probably you will want a Bare Metal server, tuned to your application.
Bare Metal doesn't have the flexibility of the cloud, that's a given, but sometimes it's better.
On a Bare Metal infrastructure, it requires you to request a new server and configure it, which is not always easy, especially if you want to just test some tech. That's the point when Cloud was big win for us. We can test it without needing to set up a server on our own.
But, if you need a more permanent application, probably you will want a Bare Metal server, tuned to your application.
IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers Feature Ratings
IBM Bare Metal Servers Bandwidth, Pricing Billing and Efficiency
This change barely helped us, since we moved web assets to S3/Cloudfront to save bandwidth before these changes. Our bandwidth usage was low after that.
At least as we've known, that price reduction was only for new servers, not existing ones. We had 5 servers, so to get that discount we needed to configure 5 new servers and for one month pay 10 servers, while we move data from one server to another. So, for us at least, that was not a very exciting prospect.
I don’t know how much time was saved
We use one server to host a Kaltura Open server. That particular server transcoded and served videos. We notice that even when the task was intensive, we get several video renditions ready after a few minutes, matching speed of other dedicated services like Brightcove.
So, not only was it efficient, it also was fast, because we were able to set up that solution on the same day as we ordered the server.
So, not only was it efficient, it also was fast, because we were able to set up that solution on the same day as we ordered the server.
As we use the servers for web hosting and we needed to have the servers up 24/7, we don't use hourly billing.
The management interface is just great. Even when we use it only for Bare Metal Servers, it's easy to monitor and manage the servers there.
Editing Firewall rules, accessing the KVM management, restart, and monitor server status were the more common tasks that we do, and it just worked perfect.
Editing Firewall rules, accessing the KVM management, restart, and monitor server status were the more common tasks that we do, and it just worked perfect.