Bare Metal For the Rest of Us

Bare metal switching technology fueled the world’s big cloud data centers, with a simplified supply chain as the economic driver. Now the technology and economics are hitting the mainstream in open networking solutions for the rest of us.

Bare metal servers changed the world of compute. The same thing is happening in networking: bare metal switches are the foundation for an inevitable shift in data center networking. The movement is called “open networking” but at it’s core, it’s really just about great physical networks with the additional benefits of a rich ecosystem, broad support for automation and monitoring tools, and improved economics.

The big players in bare metal switching – including Accton and Quanta – leverage best-in-class components to deliver high performance switches, and they do it fast. Add an OS (more on that later) and you’ve got a disaggregated model that enables networking that fulfills the vision of the software-defined data center. If SDDC doesn’t matter so much to you, then think of this: bare metal may fulfill your vision of a more affordable, manageable network that gives you the time and funding for more projects that really help your business.

(For comparisons on pricing and shipping speed versus Continue reading