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Bare Metal vs. Virtual Machines vs. Containers: What’s Best

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Bare Metal vs. Virtual Machines vs. Containers: What’s Best

Bare Metal vs. Virtual Machines vs. Containers

When it comes to hosting and deploying software, choosing the right infrastructure—Bare Metal, Virtual Machines, Containers, or a combination of Virtual Machines and Containers—can be overwhelming. Each option comes with trade-offs in performance, scalability, and cost.

Pick the wrong one, and you risk overspending, underperforming, or facing complex management challenges. So, do you need raw power, flexibility, or lightweight efficiency?

This guide breaks down the differences to help you choose the best fit for your workloads. Let’s dive in!

What is bare metal? 

Before virtualization emerged in the 1990s and cloud technologies gained traction post-2000, all servers operated on bare metal. Bare metal refers to the physical server hardware—a metal enclosure housing a motherboard, processor, memory, power supply, cooling fans, disk drives, and various networking and interface components—where software and applications are directly installed.

These physical servers were dedicated to a single tenant, granting them full control over the hardware configuration, including the processor type, memory capacity, and storage size, as well as the software they chose to run

 

Advantages Disadvantages
  • A fully customizable hardware and software stack
  • Delivers top performance as there isn’t a virtualization layer between the host, libraries and applications
  • Enhanced security since the machine isn’t shared, with potential compliance benefits
  • Additional hardware is required for each new application 
  • Often fail to maximize resource utilization. For instance, an app might use only 40% of the server’s compute power on average, leaving 60% unused
  • In case of hardware failure, such as a faulty power supply or disk drive, the entire machine becomes inoperable until it’s repaired or replaced with an identical one

Virtualization 

While bare metal refers to physical server hardware, Virtual Machines (VMs) and Containers are virtualization technologies operating at the software layer. 

Virtualization allows a single physical machine to be divided into multiple smaller instances, each functioning as an independent system. Hence, multiple VMs or containers can run on a single bare metal server. 

What are virtual machines (VMs)?

The core technology behind Virtual Machines (VMs) is the hypervisor – a software that emulates specific hardware components or an entire computer, enabling physical resources to be divided into multiple virtual machines, each running its own operating system (OS). Hypervisors can run either on the host OS or directly on bare metal

The computer running the hypervisor is known as the Host System, while the VMs it creates and manages are referred to as Guest Systems.

 

Advantages Disadvantages
  • As multiple VMs share the same hardware, this reduces hardware expenses and lowers energy consumption, cutting overall costs for the organization
  •  Since VMs run in software, they can be quickly deployed. Expanding compute capacity is as simple as adding more VMs to meet application demands
  • Virtualization allows VMs to migrate between bare metal hosts without downtime. In the event of hardware failure, VMs can be seamlessly mirrored to another host, ensuring continuous operation
  • Virtualization enables organizations to tailor virtual machines to their workloads. They can opt for general-purpose VMs with a few CPU cores and gigabytes of memory or high-performance VMs with hundreds of cores and terabytes of memory.
  • Virtual machines can be affected by the noisy neighbor problem, where one resource-heavy application negatively impacts the performance of others sharing the same physical resources. This can lead to degraded performance for the affected application due to resource contention
  • Since multiple virtual machines share the same physical CPU cores on bare metal hardware, they are susceptible to security vulnerabilities targeting flaws in modern processors. Well-known side-channel attacks, such as Meltdown and Spectre, are examples of such threats

What are containers?

Containers virtualize only the operating system, rather than the entire physical machine like virtual machines.

They don’t require a Guest OS or hypervisor. Instead, all containers on a host system share the same OS kernel, containing only the application(s) and their libraries and dependencies.

This makes containers highly lightweight and fast.

Moreover, since containers are agnostic to the underlying hardware, they can run seamlessly across various platforms, data centers, and cloud providers. It’s one of the key reasons why containers are a cornerstone of DevOps workflows

 

Advantages Disadvantages
  • Containers offer a lightweight, portable solution for packaging and deploying applications, simplifying the process of moving them across different environments and infrastructure setups
  • Containers provide a level of isolation between applications and their dependencies, preventing conflicts and ensuring each application runs in its own dedicated environment
  • Containers are more resource-efficient than virtual machines, as they share the underlying operating system kernel. This results in quicker startup times and lower memory and CPU consumption
  • Since containers share the same operating system kernel, an attacker who compromises one container may gain access to others on the same host.
  • Managing containers and their dependencies can be challenging, especially at scale. With numerous components involved in deploying and maintaining containers, misconfigurations and security vulnerabilities may arise.
  • Containers are designed to run a single application or service, which may not be ideal for complex applications that require multiple services or components to work together. This can make deploying and managing certain applications in a containerized environment difficult.

Can you combine Containers and Virtual Machines?

It is possible to combine virtualization technologies within the same platform and infrastructure. VMs are ideal for running Docker hosts, whether it’s a vSphere VM, Hyper-V VM, or AWS EC2 instance—all of them can effectively host a Docker container server.

Containers and VMs work seamlessly together, allowing container-based services to interact with VM-based services. Running an application inside a Docker container doesn’t prevent it from leveraging the benefits of a VM.

The synergy between VMs and containers is particularly beneficial for scalability. A vSphere host can run multiple VM instances, which can, in turn, host both traditional VMs and Docker containers. By integrating Docker containers with VMs, system administrators can maximize the utilization of physical hardware resources.

 

Advantages Disadvantages
  • VM images enable applications to quickly and easily move between different hosts.
  • Isolation between VMs running on separate hosts enhances security and simplifies management.
  • A consistent infrastructure can be established when all applications run on the same type of VM, regardless of whether the underlying host servers are homogeneous.
  • Managing both containers and VMs within the same environment can increase the complexity of your infrastructure, requiring more tools and expertise to ensure seamless integration and operation
  • While containers are lightweight, running them inside VMs can introduce additional resource overhead. This may result in lower overall efficiency compared to running containers directly on bare metal or within a container-native environment

When to use what

Bare Metal vs. Virtual Machines vs. Containers

Here’s when to use each of these technologies:

Bare metal

  • High performance needs: When you require maximum performance without any virtualization overhead, such as for resource-intensive applications
  • Complete control: If you need full control over the hardware, including the processor, memory, and storage
  • Security & compliance: For applications with strict security requirements where isolation and complete hardware control are essential.
  • Customization: When the environment needs to be fully customized to your specific hardware requirements and you have no need for the abstraction that comes with virtualization.

Virtual machines

  • Isolation: When you need strong isolation between applications or services, such as running multiple operating systems or legacy applications that require a specific OS version.
  • Resource flexibility: When you need to scale applications by creating isolated virtual environments that mimic physical servers.
  • Platform independence: If you need to run applications in a consistent environment that can move between different hardware, clouds, or data centers.

Containers

  • Lightweight & fast: When you need lightweight, fast deployment and rapid scaling of applications.
  • Microservices: Ideal for microservice architectures where different components of an application need to run independently and communicate with each other.
  • Portability: When portability across multiple environments (e.g., development, testing, production, or different cloud providers) is a priority.
  • Resource efficiency: When optimizing resource usage and reducing overhead is crucial, as containers share the same operating system kernel.

VM & containers combined

  • Scalability & flexibility: When you want the flexibility of containers but need the added isolation and resource management capabilities of VMs.
  • Hybrid workloads: For workloads that require a mix of traditional VM-based services (e.g., legacy apps) and modern containerized services (e.g., microservices).
  • Cloud-native and legacy applications: If you’re running a mix of containerized applications alongside legacy applications that require VMs for compatibility reasons.
  • High availability: When you need high availability and failover capabilities by leveraging VMs to host multiple containers across different physical hosts or cloud providers.

Conclusion

Choosing between Bare Metal, Virtual Machines, Containers, or a hybrid approach depends on your performance needs, scalability goals, budget, and level of control required. Bare metal is perfect for maximum performance and full control, while virtual machines offer strong isolation and flexibility. Containers shine in lightweight scalability and rapid deployment making them ideal for modern cloud-native applications. On the other hand, combining VMs and containers gives you the scalability and flexibility needed to meet various workloads.

Want to explore the best solution for your infrastructure? Reach out to our experts at LARION for a tailored consultation today!

Author

Larion

At LARION, we bring over 20 years of experience delivering custom software solutions to fast-growing startups, and global enterprises. Our blog brings you expert insights, practical tips, and real-world lessons to help businesses and tech professionals navigate today's complex digital landscape.

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