The benefits of using bare metal for ecommerce

Are you planning to expand your ecommerce business or start a new one, possibly using bare metal servers? There’s no better time than now. As of October 2023, 2.4 billion people use ecommerce, and that number is projected to reach 3.4 billion by 2028.

Is your website ready to handle the traffic from a billion new ecommerce users? Will the increased traffic slow down your website? Your webserver has a significant role in your website performance and customers’ shopping experience. 

If you are looking for web server options, exploring bare metal servers is a great idea. They offer performance, scalability, and security for your ecommerce store.

We explore the basics of bare metal servers and the benefits of using bare metal for ecommerce to help you get the most out of your online store in this article.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• What is a bare metal server?
• Benefits of bare metal servers for ecommerce
• How to choose a bare metal provider for your ecommerce business
• Final thoughts: Advantages of bare metal servers for ecommerce

What is a bare metal server?

Bare metal servers are physical servers dedicated to a single client. Unlike a shared server where multiple tenants share the server resources, the single client of the bare metal server has 100 percent access to the server’s resources, including processing power and storage.

Bare metal servers may be located on the client’s premises or in the data centers of a service provider offering bare metal-as-a-service. 

Bare metal server vs dedicated server

Bare metal and dedicated servers have a single tenant with hardware and software resources of these servers dedicated to that tenant. However, bare metal servers are slightly different from dedicated servers. 

Virtualization: A dedicated server could have a hypervisor, a software layer between the hardware and the operating system. Bare metal servers don’t have a hypervisor installed, so the operating system runs directly on the server hardware. 

Configuration options: With a bare metal server, you can choose the exact hardware specifications your business needs, whereas dedicated server hardware often comes pre-configured.

Provisioning time: With bare metal servers, you can instantly scale up since most hosting providers offer instantly deployable resources. Whereas in the case of dedicated servers, the provisioning time could be longer.

Now that we have covered the basic definitions, let’s explore how a bare metal server can help your ecommerce business.

Enhanced performance and scalability

Ecommerce stores experience traffic spikes for several reasons. A heavily discounted sale during Black Friday, a viral marketing campaign, or a celebrity endorsing the brand all cause traffic surges. 

An ecommerce platform could slow down or even crash if it isn’t prepared to handle the high traffic or scale resources in near real-time. Case in point, on Thanksgiving Day 2019, the Costco website malfunctioned for over 16 hours, costing the company almost $11 million.

However, it’s not just about a momentary revenue loss. When an ecommerce website fails to perform, it creates a poor user experience that damages brand value. 

With bare metal servers, you don’t have to share resources like CPU, RAM, or storage with other tenants. It allows you to dedicate 100 percent of the server’s resources to your workflows. 

While using a shared server, you might face the noisy neighbor issue, where a co-tenant hogs the resources of a shared server.

Shared and virtual private servers run virtualization software between the server hardware and operating system to support multiple clients. There is no virtualization layer or associated performance degradation in bare metal servers.

Another advantage of bare metal servers is instant provisioning. Bare metal web hosting providers often offer instantly deployable hardware resources to ensure scalability.

Improved security and compliance

Ecommerce businesses store customers’ personally identifiable information like full name, address, social security number, financial information, and health records. 

In September 2022, Revoult, a fintech start-up, was hit by a cyberattack where hackers momentarily accessed the personal data of over 50,000 users.

According to Statista, in 2022, there were 1,862 data breaches in the U.S., affecting 422 million people. U.S. federal laws such as HIPAA for healthcare providers and state-specific laws like the California Consumer Privacy Act, Colorado Privacy Act, and Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act set guidelines on how you must protect consumer information. 

Plus, ecommerce businesses that store customers’ credit card information should comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). 

If you are operating in countries other than the U.S., you’ll need to adhere to region-specific data privacy rules, including: 

• General Data Protection Regulation(GDPR) in the European Union
• Data Protection Act in the United Kingdom
• Privacy Legislation Amendment Bill in Australia

Bare metal for ecommerce provides a highly secure, isolated environment for your ecommerce business to help ensure data protection. There are several ways bare metal servers can do this:

Complete isolation: Your business’s sensitive data isn’t stored in a shared environment, only on an isolated physical server. 

Protection from other tenants: Since you aren’t sharing the server with other tenants, any security breach or malicious attacks against another tenant can’t impact your security. 

Root level control: Bare metal servers give you root-level access to your server software,

allowing you to configure firewalls, install anti-virus software, and run security protocols. 

Further, bare metal web hosting providers often provide added security measures like SSL certificates, DDoS attack protection, private IP addresses, and physical security for the IT infrastructure. So, choosing a bare metal server can help you avoid data breaches and associated losses. 

Dedicated resources and customization

Unlike shared virtual environments, a bare metal server gives you dedicated hardware resources including:

• RAM 
• Processors
• Hard disk space
• Network interfaces

You may build much of the bare metal server IT infrastructure from scratch by choosing its CPU speed, number of cores, memory, storage, and bandwidth to match your workload. A dedicated, bare metal server also allows you to choose an operating system and choose from control panels like Interworks, cPanel, and Plesk.

Some bare metal providers provide an API interface to configure your server. With root-level access to the server, you may create multiple virtual machines by splitting the bare metal’s resources if desired. 

These dedicated resources and on-demand customization options will help you tune your server to suit your specific needs. 

High availability and reliability

Unlike brick-and-mortar stores, ecommerce websites are open 24/7 and often serve a global audience, so your web server should always be up and running. Any downtime could impact your revenue and brand reputation. 

As your business grows, you must ensure your server can handle the increased workload. With bare metal for ecommerce, you can choose a server that supports your business requirements. You may also scale up your resources (either manually or through automation features) if you expect more load in a certain period. 

Physical security is part of the reliability puzzle, as unauthorized access or power shutdowns could affect the server itself. If you build your IT infrastructure at your own facility, you bear the costs of those physical security measures. However, with a high-quality bare metal web hosting provider, you offload those costs to the web host. 

Plus, by using a hosting provider, you can often choose to have your servers located in different data centers and connect using private or public cloud services. That distribution ensures that problems at one location can’t affect all of your servers.

Now that you know the benefits of bare metal for ecommerce, let’s explore what to look for in a bare metal server hosting solution.

How to choose a bare metal provider for your ecommerce business

Choosing the right bare metal server provider is crucial to business success. To help you ensure you find the right partner to power your online business, we’ve compiled a list of features to look for when shopping for a hosting provider. 

Uptime guarantee

Every moment your website is down costs you money and reputation, so finding a bare metal service provider with an uptime guarantee is important. More important is to find a host who backs up its guarantee. For example, Liquid Web provides a 100 percent network uptime guarantee on all its services and backs that up with credit if things go wrong.

Data backup and recovery 

For your server to work reliably, it needs access to accurate data. However, you might lose crucial data in case of a power outage, server failure, cyberattack, or natural disaster. Regular backups help minimize data loss.

While choosing a service provider, ensure they offer reliable data backup and recovery on-demand. For example, Liquid Web offers built-in bare metal backup with Acronis Cyber Backup. Automation options for backups are also a good idea. 

Customizable hardware

A bare metal provider should allow you to choose the hardware specifications of your bare metal server. Being able to pick the server specifications that suit your company’s needs will help you build a high-speed website and optimize it.

Some providers offer pre-built bare metal servers at a fixed price, but that can result in you spending money on hardware features that you don’t really need. 

Ecommerce compatibility 

When starting an ecommerce business, you need a hosting provider offering bare metal server and ecommerce support. 

A bare metal provider with ecommerce support helps you optimize your hardware for your specific ecommerce platform and apps. They can also help you choose the bare metal specifications needed for your website plans. 

Utilizing a managed ecommerce service instead of unmanaged offers extra support and features such as:

• Autoscaling during heavy traffic periods
• Improved speed through a content delivery network (CDN)
• Easy migration
• Ecommerce plugin  and app support

For example, Liquid Web offers managed WordPress, WooCommerce, and Magento hosting.

Flexible server management 

The lack of technical expertise shouldn’t stop you from using bare metal for ecommerce. You just need to find a host with the server and account management options that fit your needs.

For example, Liquid Web offers three management levels:

• Self-managed: The business owner is fully responsible for hardware and software management.
• Core managed: Liquid Web handles the installation of the core software package and operating system.
• Fully managed: Liquid Web handles the installation of security software, migration support, and control panel support. 

When you choose a service provider with flexible support options, you have the freedom to start with a fully managed bare metal server and move on to self-managed mode as you learn.

Customer support 

Ecommerce is a time-sensitive business that requires quick, near real-time support if your bare metal server has issues. So, looking for a service provider who can quickly and reliably give you around-the-clock customer support over multiple channels like chat, email, and phone is essential.

You need to choose a service provider with a guaranteed response time. Read the service level agreements (SLAs) to understand how or if they will compensate if they can’t deliver on the guarantee. 

For example, Liquid Web has a guaranteed 59-second phone answer and live chat initial response time, plus a help desk response time of 59 minutes for more complex issues. In contrast, some other hosts only promise a response within 24 hours by email. 

Final thoughts: Advantages of bare metal servers for ecommerce 

Bare metal servers offer 100 percent resource utilization, high performance, security, and availability. However, not every business needs a bare metal server. Some may operate successfully on a shared virtual server with strong managed hosting. 

However, choosing a host like Liquid Web, which offers many hosting options, gives you the flexibility to scale as your business grows.

You might want to consider migrating to bare metal if you plan to expand your business and need dedicated hosting resources that assure high performance computing. You might also want to consider bare metal to protect sensitive customer data. 

A bare metal server is also a good hosting option for entrepreneurs who know the technical aspects of server management. You can experiment with new software and hardware with complete control over your web server. 

You can also combine the best of bare metal and the best of the cloud. Bare metal cloud hosting uses a virtualization layer on top of the bare metal server to combine the power and security of bare metal with the flexibility of cloud computing. 

Liquid Web offers a 100 percent uptime guarantee, enhanced security features, flexible management options, and 24/7 support over chat.

Are you looking for a secure, high performance server for your ecommerce business? Check out Liquid Web’s bare cloud metal today.

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