Bare Metal or Virtualized?

About this interactive

Bare metal is the oldest model and still the most common on desks: the operating system is installed on the hardware, and the services run on the operating system. It is simple and it is fast, because nothing sits in between. Its weakness is deployment. Every new server means specs, quotes, a purchase and an install, and every service on the one operating system competes for the same resources. So it is kept for systems where performance matters most, such as a busy database. Virtualization adds an abstraction layer between the software and the hardware. The software thinks it is talking to the hardware, but the layer makes the calls, so several instances, even different operating systems, share one machine. The layer takes work to set up and costs a little performance, but after that new instances are quick, cheap and easy to copy for resilience. The same idea applies to desktops (VDI), storage and networks (SDN, SD-WAN). To sort a card, ask whether anything sits between the operating system and the hardware.

What you'll learn

Tell a bare metal deployment, with the OS installed directly on the hardware, from a virtualized one, where an abstraction layer sits between the software and the hardware
Match each model to its trade-offs: bare metal's simplicity and performance against its slow, costly deployment, and virtualization's fast, scalable deployment against its overhead

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

3.1 Compare and contrast security implications of different architecture models.

Key terms

Bare Metal: A deployment model in which an operating system or application runs directly on physical hardware without any virtualization layer, providing maximum performance by eliminating hypervisor overhead.
Virtualization: The use of an abstraction layer between software and hardware to create virtual representations of physical resources such as servers, storage, and networks.
Virtual Machine: A software emulation of a physical computer that runs an operating system and applications.
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: A virtualization technology in which desktop operating systems run as virtual machines on centralized servers and are delivered to end-user devices over a network. VDI simplifies desktop management, improves security, and allows users to access their desktop environment from any device.
Software-defined Network: A network architecture that decouples the control plane from the data plane, enabling centralized, programmable network management through software controllers rather than individual device configuration. SDN allows network behavior to be dynamically adjusted through software, simplifying management and enabling rapid provisioning.
Scalability: The ability of a system to handle increased load by adding resources without degrading performance.

Topics

Interactive Streak Sort

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