Traditionally, virtualization has been an IT cornerstone, providing automation and consistency. But with recent events undermining the reliability of virtualization, it might be time to reevaluate its role in your infrastructure. However, the concept of “devirtualization,” discussed by Philip Dawson in the 2024 Gartner® Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategy challenges this assumption.
In this post, we explore the opportunities supporting Dawson’s statement that “On-premises virtualized large complex workloads with more marginal consolidation benefits are being considered to rehost on physical servers or devirtualize.”
You can also hear Rob discuss this trend in this TFIR interview.
What is devirtualization? More than back to bare metal!
Devirtualization is the idea that many workloads we’ve historically virtualized don’t need to be. It’s different from revirtualization (switching virtualization providers) or repatriation (bringing workloads back from the cloud). Of course, the bare metal (physical infrastructure) layer has always been there, but now operations teams are challenging the idea that virtualization is required in modern IT architectures.
Why (re)consider bare metal?
At RackN, we see a growing interest in running natively on bare metal (aka devirtualization). Companies are exploring running Kubernetes on bare metal, managing AI compute infrastructure, and operating high-performance compute systems without the virtualization layer.
Our customers have successfully adopted this approach, running Kubernetes, storage clusters, and other critical applications directly on bare metal. This shift offers several advantages:
- Cost Reduction: Virtualization adds significant software and architectural costs. Eliminating it can lead to substantial savings.
- Improved Control: Running workloads directly on bare metal increases control over infrastructure, reducing dependency on specific vendors like VMware.
- Efficiency: Bare metal infrastructure allows for more efficient use of resources, especially for specialized workloads like AI and high-performance computing. Virtualization, while enabling partitioning, does add overhead and complexity while bare metal systems can be much simpler to manage.
- Vendor Flexibility: Treating bare metal as a general purpose resource makes it possible to implement different hardware OEMs and software platforms without getting locked in. This can dramatically improve your IT supply chain resilience.
One of virtualization’s key benefits has been the automation and consistency it offers. However, with full life-cycle bare metal management platforms like Digital Rebar, it’s now possible to achieve the same level of automation and control directly on bare metal.
Reevaluating virtualization creates opportunities
Challenging the assumption that virtualization is essential opens up new possibilities for IT infrastructure design. These benefits are not simply about swapping out VMs for servers. It enables organizations to streamline networking and storage architectures by eliminating software networking and storage complexity. It helps optimize power consumption and resilience strategies by making it easier to right-size machines and turn off idle systems. Ultimately, we’re breaking the one size fits all thinking fueled by VMware evangelists.
Devirtualization isn’t just a concept but a practical approach to modernizing IT infrastructure. Our customers see benefits from this approach incredibly quickly. We’re proud to be helping organizations unlock the full potential of their bare metal environments and achieve significant ROI.
For more information on pivoting away from virtualization, check out our workbook!
Disclaimers
Gartner®, Hype Cycle for Infrastructure Strategy, 2024, Phillip Dawson, Nathan Hill, 17 June 2024.
Gartner® is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.
Gartner® does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Garter research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s® research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner® disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
