5 ms·

Bare metal can come back, says Gartner, citing VMware prices

14 points by laktak 2y ago

freeone3000 2y ago
Doubtful. Containerization has eaten away at pure virtual marketshare — k8s is more popular now than VMWare. There’s not a chance in this world that the hyperscalers are going to go back to single-purpose machines. KVM is also perfectly capable, as is Hyper-V, for the small workloads described here. VMware is the best, but if the best is too expensive, second-best does the job just fine. However, this piece also serves as an intro to the software of a modern datacenter. The author seems to have had a bunch of concepts thrown at them and had only a few sentences to explain each; actually looking at the techs involved will give you a better overview of what’s possible with only a physical machine or two!
docandrew 2y ago
The advantage to virtualization is having an API that can be used to spin up new k8s nodes. Bare metal provisioning is still a mess of PXE, badly-supported firmware, finicky DHCP and network settings and poor tooling. Server vendors could do a lot better here IMO.
- blinded 2y ago
  You still have those concerns with installing vmware to a piece of hardware.
  - chomp 2y ago
    Also I don’t think the original quote is purely about Linux bare metal because things like vPalos exist. It’s the whole shebang from VMware that people are going to want to get away from.
- benterix 2y ago
  > The advantage to virtualization is having an API that can be used to spin up new k8s nodes. True, but I was surprised some companies offer metal as a service, e.g. OVH claims they can spin it up in 2 minutes: https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/ https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
throwaway81523 2y ago
I don't know anyone who actually uses VMware. The big cloud operators certainly don't. The small ones I know don't either (they use KVM). I guess that leaves an invisible middle?
- blinded 2y ago
  Enterprise customers with on prem servers. Think fortune 500 with infra not in the cloud.
  - throwaway81523 2y ago
    Yeah that's what I mean, intermediate between small fry and Amazon.
    - blinded 2y ago
      Ah I see. Yes I totally agree.
blinded 2y ago
I don't consider a vm "bare metal". Used vmware suite a ton when I started my career. Everything now is pxe tooling, in house provisioning apis, containers, etc.
benterix 2y ago
It just makes no sense. If VMware is too expensive, people who need virtualization will switch to KVM (many big players already did). Using bare metal is a completely different use case.

14 points by laktak 2y ago

Doubtful. Containerization has eaten away at pure virtual marketshare — k8s is more popular now than VMWare. There’s not a chance in this world that the hyperscalers are going to go back to single-purpose machines. KVM is also perfectly capable, as is Hyper-V, for the small workloads described here. VMware is the best, but if the best is too expensive, second-best does the job just fine. However, this piece also serves as an intro to the software of a modern datacenter. The author seems to have had a bunch of concepts thrown at them and had only a few sentences to explain each; actually looking at the techs involved will give you a better overview of what’s possible with only a physical machine or two!

docandrew 2y ago

The advantage to virtualization is having an API that can be used to spin up new k8s nodes. Bare metal provisioning is still a mess of PXE, badly-supported firmware, finicky DHCP and network settings and poor tooling. Server vendors could do a lot better here IMO.

blinded 2y ago
You still have those concerns with installing vmware to a piece of hardware.
- chomp 2y ago
  Also I don’t think the original quote is purely about Linux bare metal because things like vPalos exist. It’s the whole shebang from VMware that people are going to want to get away from.
benterix 2y ago
> The advantage to virtualization is having an API that can be used to spin up new k8s nodes. True, but I was surprised some companies offer metal as a service, e.g. OVH claims they can spin it up in 2 minutes: https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/ https://www.ovhcloud.com/en/bare-metal/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

throwaway81523 2y ago

I don't know anyone who actually uses VMware. The big cloud operators certainly don't. The small ones I know don't either (they use KVM). I guess that leaves an invisible middle?

blinded 2y ago
Enterprise customers with on prem servers. Think fortune 500 with infra not in the cloud.
- throwaway81523 2y ago
  Yeah that's what I mean, intermediate between small fry and Amazon.
  - blinded 2y ago
    Ah I see. Yes I totally agree.

blinded 2y ago

I don't consider a vm "bare metal". Used vmware suite a ton when I started my career. Everything now is pxe tooling, in house provisioning apis, containers, etc.

benterix 2y ago

It just makes no sense. If VMware is too expensive, people who need virtualization will switch to KVM (many big players already did). Using bare metal is a completely different use case.