Maddy Osman Bare metal servers offer unique advantages to big data analysis — an increasingly prevalent need for data-driven businesses today.
In fact, organizations transitioning to a data-driven culture increased from 23.9 percent in 2023 to 48.1 percent in 2024, according to a Wavestone survey of data executives from Fortune 1000 and leading global brands.
While that’s a huge shift for such large organizations, this transformation is understandable, as 87 percent of organizations reported that investing in data and analytics delivered measurable business value to their companies.
As a modern business dealing in customer data, you can also follow in the footsteps of these giants to have an advantage over your competitors. In fact, you might even be able to get the first-mover advantage.
But there are complexities, as well. Due to economies of scale, you might not see the same results the big organizations get. Instead of increasing your gains, you might have to bear high cloud costs due to servers running continuous big data analytics workloads.
That said, you can turn to bare metal servers to benefit from big data without bleeding your finances dry. Plus, you’ll get to solve many issues surrounding big data analytics.
Read on to learn more about the challenges of big data analytics and how bare metal servers set you up for success. Here’s what we’ll cover in this article:
- Challenges of big data analytics
- Bare metal servers: A solution for big data analytics
- Bare metal server benefits
- Moving from cloud to bare metal: Best practices
- Final thoughts: Using bare metal servers for big data analytics
Key points
- The challenges of implementing big data analytics in your business include complying with data privacy and protection regulations, choosing hardware that can keep up with large workloads, and finding room in your budget for the extra expenses.
- A bare metal server can help you overcome these challenges due to its high performance, affordable pricing, and exclusive access.
- Bare metal servers offer options for extensive customization, as well as compliance with a variety of security standards.
- When moving a bare metal server, choose a reliable hosting provider that offers high-quality support and relevant compliance certifications.
Challenges of big data analytics
While big data analytics has a lot of potential for businesses of all sizes, it also comes with an additional set of challenges.
Data privacy
With great power comes great responsibility. While you can store and process the data you collect from customers, you have to be mindful of the data protection and privacy laws around the world.
In particular, if you target customers living in the European Union (EU), you must comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires companies to store and process personal data of EU residents within the EU or in countries with adequate data protection laws according to the EU.
Similarly, if your business deals with the individually identifiable health information of U.S. citizens in any way, your IT system must comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) during data analytics processes.
As a result, picking the right infrastructure for big data analytics workloads isn’t so straightforward. So, while public cloud services might be optimal for other workloads, like machine learning, they can make audits rather tricky, as you’ll rely on virtual air gaps instead of physical ones.
Hardware requirements
Typical big data analytics workloads involve processing large amounts of data, performing complex transformations, and handling different processes at the same time. As a result, your IT system may face problems when working with big data.
For example, here are a couple of hardware challenges you’ll have to deal with:
- Latency issues: If your IT system relies on traditional hard drives instead of modern SSDs, your data analytics algorithm will process workloads at extremely slow speeds. Similarly, the network connection between the distributed nodes of the big data environment will act as a performance bottleneck.
- Resource competition: If you host your data analytics workloads in a multitenant cloud environment, your processes will have to compete with neighboring tasks — also called the noisy neighbor problem — which may slow your tasks down.
- Expensive hardware: To process big data, you’ll need servers with powerful processors, high-speed storage, and large amounts of RAM. While such hardware is expensive by itself, the bundled package from cloud providers might further imbalance your IT budget.
High costs
Besides the hardware costs, you’ll also have to consider the extra expenses you incur by hosting your big data analytics workloads in the cloud.
In particular, cloud providers typically charge for data egress — or when data leaves their system. For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) charges between $0.08 to $0.12 per GB for data egress, which can easily mean hundreds to thousands of dollars when it comes to big data analytics.
Similarly, there’s the issue of paid support. While your team can find solutions to their problems by heading to the knowledge base of public clouds, they won’t find much help from the providers if they get stuck. Instead, you’ll have to pay for customer support.
Finally, even if you hold a license for a specific data analytics software in your in-house IT infrastructure, you’ll need to pay the licensing fee again to use it in the cloud.
Bare metal servers: A solution for big data analytics
Given all the challenges of big data analytics, you might find a better solution outside the cloud — namely, bare metal servers, which offer high performance with affordable and predictable pricing.
A bare metal server refers to a physical server without any virtualization layer. Plus, it comes with exclusive access — so you don’t have to worry about any neighbors slowing down your data analytics processes.
In fact, since a bare metal server doesn’t have preinstalled virtualization software, you also don’t have to worry about virtualization overhead eating away a portion of your computing resources.
Additionally, you can customize your bare metal servers as you wish by adding cutting-edge hardware and installing preferred software — you can also use preowned licenses.
That said, while affordable, a bare metal server requires a bit more technical involvement than cloud servers — which can also be a plus if you have multiple IT experts on your team. For instance, you can leverage infrastructure as code (IaC) to make bare metal servers an integral part of your workflow.
For example, if a specific process relies on a particular data analytics workload, your team can use code to run that workload on the go — as opposed to worrying about complicated access controls on public cloud providers.
Bare metal server benefits
Besides being an affordable alternative to cloud computing, bare metal servers offer several unique benefits.
High performance
Without the hypervisor overhead, a physical machine in the bare metal server configuration outshines a cloud server with a similar configuration in performance. In particular, if you rely on multiple nodes, the removal of hypervisors is a major performance boost for big data analytics workloads.
Additionally, bare metal server plans typically come with cutting-edge hardware, so you can get much better performance compared to the cloud — with powerful CPUs, quick SSDs, and extensive RAM configurations.
For instance, with Liquid Web’s bare metal plans, you get access to the latest Xeon processors, such as Intel Xeon Gold 6226R.
Exclusive access
A bare metal server is a single-tenant dedicated server. As a result, you don’t have to worry about any neighboring virtual machines competing for hardware resources. Instead, you configure a bare metal server from the ground up — by optimizing its physical specifications, installing the operating system, and setting up the software tech stack.
Without the noisy neighbors affecting your IT infrastructure, you may also make the bare metal servers an integral part of your workflows for running big data analytics processes at low latency.
As a result, bare metal servers can be handy if you’re processing data for financial trading, real-time communication, or personalized marketing.
Security compliance
Since a bare metal server offers a physical machine with dedicated resources isolated from the external networks, it gives the air gap you need for breezing through security audits.
Besides that, you also have more options to choose from, letting you work with a hosting provider that complies with the relevant security standards. Liquid Web, for instance, holds certifications for complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), HIPAA, GDPR, Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements 22 (SSAE 22), and more.
Not to mention, Liquid Web also has data centers in both the U.S. and the EU to help you comply with relevant data residency requirements without spending an arm and a leg.
Extensive customization
With bare metal dedicated servers, you can build your custom data processing station from the ground up. You have complete control over your server hardware selection, operating system versions, and software solutions.
So, whether you’re dealing with a NoSQL database like MongoDB, using a relational database like MySQL, or building your own Kubernetes clusters to develop managed services in-house, you can always find a solution in the bare metal environment.
Liquid Web simplifies this customization by letting you use its Cloud Studio API to manage servers on the fly. Instead of having your IT team manually provision resources for data analytics when required, you can make provisioning a part of your code by leveraging the API.
Predictable infrastructure
Network outages, software bugs, and hardware failures are part of normal IT operations. In fact, from Jan. 19-22, 2024, Microsoft Azure suffered three cloud infrastructure issues, each of which could impact your business operations.
That said, there’s also routine maintenance downtime you have to consider. With a public cloud, you typically have to let the provider do its thing while you manage your losses. In contrast, bare metal servers enable you to dictate when you can afford downtime, so you can pass through maintenance tasks unscathed.
Moving from cloud to bare metal: Best practices
According to a 2023 Flexera report, managing cloud expenses remains the top cloud challenge for 82 percent of organizations. If that stands true for your business, you may benefit from switching to bare metal servers.
That said, you must keep the following best practices in mind to get optimal results.
Identify your needs
Both bare metal servers and cloud infrastructure have their uses, so ensure you invest in a plan appropriate for your use case.
For instance, if you’re dealing with consistent big data analytics workloads, bare metal server plans are often cheaper. Still, if you want to run analytics processes on and off, you may benefit from the on-demand high-performance computing that the cloud offers.
Your in-house IT team will be a key factor, as well. If you have IT experts who know their way around server management, you can save big with bare metal servers. Otherwise, cloud infrastructure with a virtualization layer may be easier to manage.
Besides that, gauge the resource demands of your big data analytics workloads to ensure you decide on the appropriate hardware when sizing your bare metal server.
Consider security requirements
Since big data analytics deals with everything data, you must consider the data privacy and security regulations you must comply with. For example, if you deal with sensitive patient healthcare information in the U.S., you’ll need to adhere to HIPAA requirements.
When that’s the case, ensure the IT infrastructure you opt for has the relevant compliance certifications. Plus, you must consider the security policies the concerned hosting provider has in place to help you stay on the right side of the law.
For instance, Liquid Web offers dedicated HIPAA-compliant hosting plans that are audited/verified by a third-party expert firm.
Partner with a reliable hosting provider
While transitioning to bare metal servers might help you lower your cloud spend, managing your physical machines takes some getting used to. You might run into issues configuring the physical hardware, installing the operating systems, or managing the different nodes.
In other words, your IT team will have a complex project at hand when you switch from the cloud to bare metal servers. That said, if you partner with a dependable hosting provider, you can make the switch a breeze, as you’ll get expert advice from its support members.
For instance, with Liquid Web, you can expect 24/7/365 support from experts who can help you resolve a whole range of issues.
Final thoughts: Using bare metal servers for big data analytics
With bare metal servers, you can enjoy the benefits of big data analytics without the added burden of unexpected cloud costs. Plus, you also benefit from easier compliance, high performance, and dedicated resources.
That said, many of these benefits rely on the bare metal hosting provider you sign up with — i.e., if it offers cutting-edge hardware, compliant data centers, and 24/7/365 customer support.
With Liquid Web’s bare metal cloud hosting plans, you get all that with the latest Intel Xeon processors, SSAE-22- and HIPAA-compliant servers, and reliable customer support.
Check out our bare metal offerings, or contact us to discuss which plan would best suit the needs of your business.