When it comes to bare metal servers, provisioning can feel like an eternity, especially when every second counts. If you’ve ever asked, “Why do bare metal servers take longer to provision than virtual servers?” you’re not alone.
Among many benefits, understanding the intricacies of bare metal provisioning can save time and support your hosting infrastructure optimization. This guide helps you gain that understanding, diving into specific challenges, such as hardware setup and configuration.
In addition, you’ll discover how to streamline your server provisioning process for maximum efficiency through automation best practices.
Understanding the complexities of bare metal provisioning not only enlightens you about the process but also empowers you to make informed decisions.
That insight helps you determine whether a physical machine is the right choice for your performance needs, giving you a sense of control and confidence in your infrastructure choices.
Key points
- Hardware setup complexity: Provisioning bare metal servers involves hardware installation, which takes more time than provisioning virtual servers.
- Operating system installation: Installing an operating system from scratch is a time-consuming process unique to bare metal servers.
- Customization and control: Bare metal servers offer extensive hardware and software configuration, customization, and control. However, this also extends setup time.
- Automation best practices: Implementing automation tools and best practices can streamline the provisioning process, minimizing manual intervention and errors.
Here’s what you’ll find.
- What is bare metal provisioning?
- Why do bare metal servers take longer to provision?
- Benefits and drawbacks of bare metal infrastructure
- Bare metal vs virtual machines vs dedicated servers
- How bare metal provisioning works
- Bare metal provisioning tools
- Automation best practices for provisioning bare metal infrastructure
- Final thoughts: Why do bare metal servers take longer to provision?
What is bare metal provisioning?
Bare metal provisioning is the process of setting up a new, empty computer (called “bare metal”) to get it ready for use. This involves installing the operating system (OS), drivers, and necessary software from scratch.
Think of bare metal provisioning as buying a new, blank hard drive and installing everything it needs to function. It’s like building a computer system from the ground up, ensuring it has all the tools and software it needs to operate properly.
Data centers, website hosts, and Bare Metal-as-a-Service (BMaaS) providers rely on the computing resources of physical machine provisioning to prepare servers for specific tasks or services.
Why do bare metal servers take longer to provision?
To set up a bare metal server, you need to physically install and configure hardware components like the CPU, memory, and SSD storage. Because of that physical hardware setup, the machines take longer to provision.
Conversely, virtual servers are software-based and can be created instantly on existing hardware.
Provisioning involves several time-consuming steps. So, why do bare metal servers take longer to provision? There are three reasons.
You must assemble physical hardware and install it in a data center, completing tasks like racking, cabling, and connecting power supplies.
Next, you need to configure the firmware and basic input/output system (BIOS) settings. Once you set up the hardware, you must install an operating system. That includes loading it onto the server, installing necessary drivers, and performing initial configurations.
Finally, you apply additional software and security updates.
Each of these steps requires manual intervention and careful setup, adding to the longer provisioning time compared to virtual servers.
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Benefits and drawbacks of bare metal infrastructure
Bare metal servers offer a unique blend of performance and control, making them a popular choice for high workloads. However, there are advantages and disadvantages to consider.
Advantages of bare metal machines
Bare metal servers shine in several key areas, offering significant benefits for specific applications and use cases.
- Performance: With no virtualization layer, applications run directly on the hardware, leading to faster processing and reduced latency.
- Dedicated resources: They don’t share hardware resources, ensuring consistent and reliable performance crucial for mission-critical applications.
- Customization: You maintain complete control over hardware and operating system configuration, allowing for a tailored server environment that meets specific needs.
Disadvantages of bare metal machines
Despite their benefits, bare metal servers also come with some drawbacks.
- Provisioning time: Setting up bare metal hardware involves more steps and can take longer compared to quickly spinning up virtual machines.
- Cost: Bare metal servers command higher price points and operational costs due to the dedicated resources and expertise needed to manage and maintain them.
- Scalability: Scaling up involves adding more physical servers, which is less flexible and more resource-intensive than provisioning additional virtual machines.
If these drawbacks feel like deal-breakers, consider virtual machines and cloud-dedicated servers as alternatives to bare metal machines.
Bare metal vs virtual machines vs dedicated servers
Besides bare metal servers, you can use virtual machines (VMs) or a dedicated server orchestration for your hosting.
But how are they different?
Virtual machines are software-based computer emulations. Dedicated servers, on the other hand, are single-tenant physical or cloud environments exclusively allocated to one client.
Choosing the wrong infrastructure can lead to performance bottlenecks, cost overruns, or scalability issues.
That’s why we created this comparison table highlighting their differences to help you make better infrastructure decisions.
| Criteria | Bare metal | Virtual machines | Dedicated servers |
| Performance | High, with direct access to dedicated hardware. | Moderate, with overhead from hypervisors. | High, similar to bare metal. |
| Scalability | Limited by physical hardware. | Highly scalable through virtualization. | Limited, but more flexible than bare metal. |
| Provisioning | Time-consuming, as it involves physical setup. | Fast, using templates and automation. | Faster than bare metal but slower than VMs. |
| Cost | High upfront investment. | Lower initial cost, pay-as-you-go options. | High, with long-term contracts. |
| Isolation | Full isolation. | Shared resources with the potential for interference. | Full isolation. |
How bare metal provisioning works
Bare metal provisioning involves several steps to configure servers consistently according to your business needs, minimizing errors and manual intervention from your team.
Here’s a breakdown of the steps involved and the tools you’ll use.
Stage 1: Network booting
The process starts with powering on a server, often through a network-initiated command.
The server’s firmware performs initial hardware checks and then attempts to boot from network resources using protocols like preboot execution environment (PXE).
For this operation, you can use server firmware, such as the BIOS or Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI). The BIOS or UEFI plays a crucial role in the boot process, initializing the hardware and launching the operating system. We’ll discuss these tools in more detail later.
The server communicates with a PXE server, which provides the necessary boot files.
Stage 2: Initial boot environment setup
Once PXE is engaged, the server boots into an environment provided by tools such as iPXE or a lightweight Linux distribution. This small operating system or installer allows the server to run scripts and commands to prepare the hardware for the next steps.
Stage 3: Automated operating system installation
Automation tools like Kickstart, Preseed, or Cloud-init execute predefined scripts that configure the server’s hardware settings and partition disks and install your desired operating system.
These tools significantly reduce manual intervention, ensure consistent setup across all servers, and adhere to the best practices for operating systems, partitions, and initial configurations.
Stage 4: Post-installation configuration
After installing the operating system, you’ll need to set up server configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
Next, install the software solutions you need, set up users, and apply security policies. These tools also handle updates and patches, ensuring ongoing security and functionality.
Stage 5: Lifecycle management
Tools like Cobbler or Foreman can help you manage the entire lifecycle of bare metal provisioning. They:
- Provide a web interface to monitor and control the provisioning process.
- Manage the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) for hosting and providing Internet protocol (IP) addresses, setting default gateways, and configuring subnet masks.
- Manage domain name server (DNS) services.
- Handle post-provisioning tasks.
These tools integrate with other systems, ensuring a seamless provisioning process.
Bare metal provisioning tools
Bare metal provisioning tools streamline server setup, management, and maintenance processes.
Network booting tools
These enable remote system initialization and management.
- Basic input/output system (BIOS): Initializes hardware and loads the operating system from network boot servers.
- Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI): Modern firmware interface that supports faster booting and larger bootable storage devices.
- Preboot execution environment (PXE) and iPXE: Allows computers to boot and install an operating system over a network using DHCP and Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP). PXE is premium, and iPXE is open source.
Automated operating systems
These streamline server setups with automated operating system installations:
- Kickstart: Automates Red Hat-based Linux installations by providing a configuration file during network boot.
- Preseed: Automates Debian-based installations with pre-configured answers to installation questions during network boot.
- Cloud-init: Configures cloud instances at first boot using user-defined scripts and configuration files.
Post-installation tools
These automate configuration and management tasks after bare metal setup.
- Ansible: Automates configuration management and application deployment through simple, agentless execution over SSH.
- Puppet: Manages configurations and automates tasks across systems using a declarative language for consistent states.
- Chef: Configures and manages infrastructure as code, ensuring consistency and automation through its domain-specific language.
Lifecycle management tools
These streamline server setup, ensuring efficient deployment and maintenance without manual intervention.
- Cobbler: Automates the installation of operating systems on bare metal servers, and manages DHCP, DNS, and PXE configurations.
- Foreman: Provides complete lifecycle management for physical and virtual servers, handling provisioning, configuration management, and monitoring.
Automation best practices for provisioning bare metal infrastructure
Automating bare metal provisioning can significantly streamline your IT operations, but it requires a thoughtful approach to get it right.
Here are some best practices to ensure your automation process is efficient and effective.
Define clear provisioning policies
Start by establishing well-defined policies for provisioning. These should include specific criteria for hardware selection, network configuration, and software installation.
Having these policies in place helps ensure that each automated process follows a consistent approach, reducing errors and misconfigurations.
Use templates for consistency
Templates are your best friend when automating provisioning. Create standardized templates for hardware setup, operating system configurations, and application installations. This consistency simplifies the provisioning process, making it easier to manage and scale.
Using templates also helps you replicate environments with minimal manual intervention.
Implement robust monitoring and logging
Set up effective monitoring and logging to manage automated provisioning. Ensure your automation tools provide comprehensive logging capabilities, letting you track each step of the provisioning process.
This visibility helps in quickly identifying and resolving issues, ensuring smooth and reliable provisioning automation.
Automate testing and validation
Before deploying automated provisioning at scale, test and validate your automation scripts thoroughly. Run tests regularly to ensure that your automation processes meet your expectations, and then make adjustments where necessary.
This proactive approach helps you catch potential issues early and maintain the reliability of your provisioning system.
At this point, you should know why bare metal servers take longer to provision. Now, you can more confidently provision your physical servers using the best practices and processes we discussed.
Final thoughts: Why do bare metal servers take longer to provision?
Provisioning bare metal servers requires configuring physical hardware from scratch, leading to longer setup times compared to cloud servers. Although this thorough setup is resource-intensive, it ensures high-performance computing and isolation.
Despite longer provisioning times, bare metal offers higher computing power and security. While traditional bare metal hosting provides top isolation and performance, it’s less flexible with resource management.
However, cloud dedicated servers combine the flexibility of cloud infrastructure with the performance, security, and reliability of bare metal servers.
You can access bare metal hosting and cloud dedicated bare metal servers on Liquid Web based on your business needs. Check out our plans to get started today, or reach out to chat with one of our hosting experts.
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