Chapter 1

Welcome to Book 4

Bare metal vs virtual — when physical hardware wins.

In this book

  • Understand bare metal vs virtualized hosting
  • Identify server components and form factors
  • Plan storage, RAID, and backups
  • Use IPMI for out-of-band management
  • Provision Linux on dedicated hardware
  • Right-size a server for Workshop Co.’s growth

When virtual is not enough

Workshop Co. runs their website on a Swift Host VPS today. Booking traffic grows. They need predictable CPU for image processing, dedicated NVMe, and compliance-friendly isolation. Bare metal means you rent or own physical servers — no hypervisor neighbour, full hardware access.

Workshop Co. — hosting timeline

Year 1
VPS at 203.0.113.10 — Nginx + PHP booking
Year 2
Traffic spikes during holiday gift-class promos
Year 3 goal
Dedicated bare metal in Swift Host Edmonton DC + keep staging on VPS
Workload
Web, MySQL, nightly backups, image thumbnails for class galleries
Bare metal ≠ DIY in your closet

Production bare metal usually lives in a data centre with redundant power, cooling, and network. Swift Host colocates or provisions servers for Canadian clients — you manage the OS; they manage the rack.

What you need

  • Books 1–3 helpful for IP, DNS, and SSH context
  • No hardware required — diagrams and specs are enough
  • Optional: IPMI/KVM access on a lab dedicated server

Try it yourself — hosting audit

List three reasons Workshop Co. might stay on VPS vs move to bare metal. There is no single correct answer — justify each.

Discussion notes

Stay VPS: lower cost, faster provisioning, sufficient for current traffic.
Move bare metal: sustained CPU for image jobs, disk IOPS guarantees, regulatory isolation.
Hybrid: prod on metal, staging/dev on VPS is common.

Key terms introduced

Bare metal
Physical server hardware without a tenant hypervisor sharing CPU/RAM.
IPMI
Intelligent Platform Management Interface — remote power and console.
RAID
Redundant Array of Independent Disks — combines drives for redundancy or speed.
RMA
Return Merchandise Authorization — hardware warranty replacement process.