Softlayer has launched a new service that will allow customers to hire bare metal servers by the hour.
These servers can be deployed within half an hour at any of its datacentres globally, according to the IBM-owned firm.
It said the provision would give customers the performance of physical servers with a low level of commitment.
“As businesses deploy more powerful workloads in the cloud, there is increased demand for performance with even shorter demand cycles. Our new hourly bare metal servers are designed to hit the sweet spot of how much power they need, how long they need it, at price points that make sense,” said Marc Jones, chief technology officer at SoftLayer.
The servers can stand alone or integrate with all other SoftLayer bare metal, virtual, storage, and networking services, all on one global platform.
These bare metal servers are classed as single tenant servers connecting directly to SoftLayer’s private global network. It claimed the worldwide private network would enable integration without additional networking fees. It also includes unlimited inter-datacentre bandwidth.
Customers can select from four base configurations with CentOS, Red Hat, FreeBSD, or the Ubuntu operating system installed.
The base configuration is deployed within 30 minutes, after which the server may be further customised with additional OS or applications.
The firm promised that other configurations would be available in the next few months.
The servers are available immediately at Softlayer’s datacentres in London, Dallas, San Jose, Washington D.C., Toronto, Amsterdam, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
Analysts said as business challenges vary on both a company-by-company and day-to-day basis, true cloud offerings must feature flexibility, diversity, and integration.
“The new hourly-rate bare metal servers use the same SoftLayer platform, control system, and API as the virtual server services – providing customers with on-demand access to the right resources for the right workloads,” said Melanie Posey, Research vice president at IDC.
