Microsoft Azure offers a cloud infrastructure with a wide range of integrated cloud services to meet your business needs. In some cases, though, you may need to run services on bare metal servers without a virtualization layer. You may need root access and control over the operating system (OS). To meet this need, Azure offers BareMetal Infrastructure for several high-value, mission-critical applications.
BareMetal Infrastructure is made up of dedicated BareMetal instances (compute instances). It features:
High-performance storage appropriate to the application (NFS, ISCSI, and Fiber Channel). Storage can also be shared across BareMetal instances to enable features like scale-out clusters or high availability pairs with failed-node-fencing capability.
A set of function-specific virtual LANs (VLANs) in an isolated environment.
This environment also has special VLANs you can access if you're running virtual machines (VMs) on one or more Azure Virtual Networks (VNets) in your Azure subscription. The entire environment is represented as a resource group in your Azure subscription.
BareMetal Infrastructure is offered in over 30 SKUs, from 2-socket to 24-socket servers, and memory ranging from 1.5 TBs up to 24 TBs. A large set of SKUs is also available with Optane memory. Azure offers the largest range of bare metal instances in a hyperscale cloud.
Why BareMetal Infrastructure?
Some workloads in the enterprise consist of technologies that just aren't designed to run in a typical virtualized cloud setting. They require special architecture, certified hardware, or extraordinarily large sizes. Although those technologies have the most sophisticated data protection and business continuity features, those features aren't built for the virtualized cloud. They're more sensitive to latencies and noisy neighbours and require more control over change management and maintenance activity.
BareMetal Infrastructure is built, certified, and tested for a select set of such applications. Azure was the first to offer such solutions and has since led with the largest portfolio and most sophisticated systems.
BareMetal benefits
BareMetal Infrastructure is intended for critical workloads that require certification to run your enterprise applications. The BareMetal instances are dedicated only to you, and you'll have full access (root access) to the operating system (OS). You manage OS and application installation according to your needs. For security, the instances are provisioned within your Azure Virtual Network (VNet) with no internet connectivity. Only services running on your virtual machines (VMs) and other Azure services in the same Tier 2 network can communicate with your BareMetal instances.
BareMetal Infrastructure offers these benefits:
Certified hardware for specialized workloads
o SAP (Refer to SAP Note #1928533. You'll need an SAP account for access.)
o Oracle (You'll need an Oracle account for access.)
Non-hypervisor BareMetal instance, single tenant ownership
Low latency between Azure-hosted application VMs to BareMetal instances (0.35 ms)
All Flash SSD and NVMe
o Up to 1 PB/tenant
o IOPS up to 1.2 million/tenant
o 40/100-GB network bandwidth
o Accessible via NFS, ISCSI, and FC
Redundant power, power supplies, NICs, TORs, ports, WANs, storage, and management
Hot spares for replacement on a failure (without the need for reconfiguring)
The customer coordinated the maintenance of the windows
Application-aware snapshots, archive, mirroring, and cloning
SKU availability in Azure regions
BareMetal Infrastructure offers multiple SKUs certified for specialized workloads. Use the workload-specific SKUs to meet your needs.
Large instances – Ranging from two-socket to four-socket systems.
Very Large instances – Ranging from 4-socket to 20-socket systems.
BareMetal Infrastructure for specialized workloads is available in the following Azure regions:
West Europe
North Europe
Germany West Central *zones support
East US 2 *zones support
East US *zones support
West US *zones support
West US 2 *zones support
South Central US
Managing BareMetal instances in Azure
Depending on your needs, the application topologies of BareMetal Infrastructure can be complex. You may deploy multiple instances in one or more locations. The instances can have shared or dedicated storage, as well as specialized LAN and WAN connections. So, for BareMetal Infrastructure, Azure offers a consultation by a CSA/GBB in the field to work with you.
By the time your BareMetal Infrastructure is provisioned, the OS, networks, storage volumes, placements in zones and regions, and WAN connections between locations have already been configured. You're set to register your OS licenses (BYOL), configure the OS, and install the application layer.
You'll see all the BareMetal resources and their state and attributes in the Azure portal. You can also operate the instances, open service requests, and support tickets from there.
Operational model
BareMetal Infrastructure is ISO 27001, ISO 27017, SOC 1, and SOC 2 compliant. It also uses a bring-your-own-license (BYOL) model: OS, specialized workload, and third-party applications.
As soon as you receive root access and full control, you assume responsibility for:
Designing and implementing backup and recovery solutions, high availability, and disaster recovery.
Licensing, security, and support for the OS and third-party software.
Microsoft is responsible for:
Providing the hardware for specialized workloads.
Provisioning the OS.
BareMetal instance stamp
The BareMetal instance stamp itself combines the following components:
Computing
Servers based on the generation of Intel Xeon processors that provide the necessary computing capability and are certified for the specialized workload.
Network
A unified high-speed network fabric interconnects computing, storage, and LAN components.
Storage
An infrastructure accessed through a unified network fabric.
Within the multi-tenant infrastructure of the BareMetal stamp, customers are deployed in isolated tenants. When deploying a tenant, you name an Azure subscription within your Azure enrollment. This Azure subscription is the one billed for your BareMetal instances.
Operating system
During the provisioning of the BareMetal instance, you can select the OS you want to install on the machines. BareMetal Infrastructure is a BYOL model
The available Linux OS versions are:
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES)
Storage
BareMetal Infrastructure provides highly redundant NFS storage and Fiber Channel storage. The infrastructure offers deep integration for enterprise workloads like SAP, SQL, and more. It also provides application-consistent data protection and data-management capabilities. The self-service management tools offer space-efficient snapshot, cloning, and granular replication capabilities along with a single pane of glass monitoring. The infrastructure enables zero RPO and RTO capabilities for data availability and business continuity needs.
The storage infrastructure offers
Up to 4 x 100-GB uplinks.
Up to 32-GB Fiber channel uplinks.
All flash SSD and NVMe drive.
Ultra-low latency and high throughput.
Scales up to 4 PB of raw storage.
Up to 11 million IOPS.
These Data access protocols are supported
iSCSI
NFS (v3 or v4)
Fiber Channel
NVMe over FC
Networking
The architecture of Azure network services is a key component for the successful deployment of specialized workloads in BareMetal instances. It's likely that not all IT systems are located in Azure already. Azure offers you network technology to make Azure look like a virtual data center for your on-premises software deployments. The Azure network functionality required for BareMetal instances includes:
Azure virtual networks are connected to the Azure ExpressRoute circuit that connects to your on-premises network assets.
The ExpressRoute circuit that connects on-premises to Azure should have a minimum bandwidth of 1 Gbps or higher.
Extended Active Directory and DNS are in Azure, or they are completely running in Azure.
ExpressRoute lets you extend your on-premises network into the Microsoft Cloud over a private connection with a connectivity provider's help. You can use ExpressRoute Local for cost-effective data transfer between your on-premises location and the Azure region you want. To extend connectivity across geopolitical boundaries, you can enable ExpressRoute Premium.
BareMetal instances are provisioned within your Azure VNet server IP address range.
The architecture shown is divided into Four sections:
Left
It shows the customer's on-premises infrastructure that runs different applications and connects through the partner or local edge router like Equinix. For more information, see Connectivity providers and locations: Azure ExpressRoute.
Center
Shows ExpressRoute provisioned using your Azure subscription, offering connectivity to the Azure edge network.
Right
Shows Azure IaaS, and in this case, the use of VMs to host your applications, which are provisioned within your Azure virtual network.
Bottom
It shows that your ExpressRoute Gateway is enabled with ExpressRoute FastPath for BareMetal connectivity, offering low latency.
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