Table of contents

What is bare metal hosting?What is Kubernetes?ComparisonWhen you might need bothBenefits of combining Kubernetes with bare metalChallengesAlternative deployment strategiesNext stepsAdditional resources

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Bare Metal → vs Kubernetes

Kubernetes vs bare metal hosting (and when you need both

Modern infrastructure isn’t one-size-fits-all. With Kubernetes taking over the orchestration world and bare metal still dominating performance-heavy workloads, the question isn’t which one is better—it’s whether you need both.

Let’s unpack what each does well, how they compare, and why they’re not always mutually exclusive.

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What is bare metal hosting?

Bare metal hosting gives you full access to a physical server—no hypervisor, no virtualization layer, no noisy neighbors. It’s a single-tenant environment built for raw power and fine-grained control.

You’ll usually see bare metal deployed in use cases that need predictable, high-performance hardware:

Real-time financial systems
Machine learning and GPU-accelerated workloads
High-throughput databases
Large multiplayer game servers
Video rendering or encoding

With no virtualization tax, performance is more consistent. You also get more control over hardware-level configurations like CPU pinning, RAID arrays, and GPU passthrough.

What is Kubernetes?

Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that automates deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It’s not a hosting platform itself—it sits above your infrastructure, abstracting away the underlying servers (bare metal, VMs, or cloud).

You’ll typically use Kubernetes when:

You’re deploying microservices or stateless applications.
You need dynamic scaling based on traffic.
You want rolling updates, self-healing workloads, and high availability.
You’re operating across hybrid or multi-cloud environments.

Kubernetes shines when you’re running lots of smaller workloads that need automation, resilience, and fast iteration.

Comparing bare metal hosting vs Kubernetes

These aren’t interchangeable. Bare metal is a form of infrastructure. Kubernetes is a tool for orchestrating containers. But they do overlap when deciding how to deploy at scale.

Performance

Bare metal wins on raw performance. No virtualization means fewer bottlenecks and better throughput, especially for I/O-intensive apps or real-time systems.

Kubernetes adds some overhead, especially when running on VMs. But it increases application-level efficiency by optimizing how containers share resources.

Resource isolation

Bare metal gives full hardware isolation. You’re not sharing RAM, disk I/O, or CPU cycles with other tenants.

Kubernetes workloads run as containers—lightweight by design, but still sharing a host OS kernel. You can use namespaces and cgroups for sandboxing, but it’s not the same as physical separation.

Scalability

Kubernetes makes it easy to scale horizontally. Add more nodes, and K8s takes care of scheduling, load balancing, and service discovery.

Bare metal scales well vertically (upgrading hardware), but is slower to scale out. Provisioning new physical servers takes longer than spinning up a VM or container.

Cost and complexity

Bare metal comes with higher upfront costs and hardware management. But for long-running, resource-heavy apps, it’s often more cost-effective than paying for cloud VMs over time.

Kubernetes reduces waste through container density and autoscaling, but it requires significant expertise to manage clusters, monitor workloads, and handle upgrades.

When you might need both

Plenty of organizations run Kubernetes on top of bare metal, and for good reason.

High-performance containers: ML inference, media pipelines, or game servers where every millisecond counts
GPU scheduling: Assigning physical GPUs to pods for training or rendering
Private cloud deployments: Using bare metal with MAAS or PXE boot and deploying K8s for internal apps
Custom storage/networking: Bare metal makes it easier to fine-tune kernel modules, drivers, and storage arrays under Kubernetes

Combining the two gives you the orchestration power of Kubernetes with the raw horsepower of bare metal.

Benefits of combining Kubernetes with bare metal

Pairing Kubernetes with bare metal infrastructure gives you the best of both worlds—modern orchestration for your applications and direct access to the underlying hardware for maximum performance and control.

Max performance: No VM layer means containers run closer to the hardware
Cost savings: No need to license hypervisors like VMware or pay for cloud markup
Hardware control: Tune BIOS, enable passthrough, tweak NUMA settings
Physical isolation: Keep workloads air-gapped or isolated for compliance
Custom integrations: Native access to hardware-level tools for storage, networking, or monitoring

Challenges of combining the two

While the benefits are compelling, running Kubernetes on bare metal also introduces significant operational challenges that require careful planning and advanced expertise.

Limited managed options: Many hosting providers don’t offer managed bare metal hosting, so Kubernetes must be set up and maintained manually
Complex provisioning: You’ll need PXE booting, IPMI, or a system like Metal³ to automate hardware
Higher staffing needs: DevOps or SRE teams need both systems knowledge and container fluency
Limited elasticity: Adding capacity takes time—especially if you don’t have cold spare servers ready to go

Alternative deployment strategies

If running Kubernetes on bare metal is too heavy a lift, there are other paths:

Kubernetes on VMs: Most cloud providers offer this out of the box (with managed upgrades and node pools)
Managed Kubernetes: Services like GKE, EKS, or AKS abstract the operational burden
Lightweight orchestrators: HashiCorp Nomad or Docker Swarm for simpler needs
Serverless platforms: For short-lived or event-based workloads

These approaches trade performance and control for ease of use and speed of deployment.

Next steps for bare metal hosting vs Kubernetes

Understanding the differences between Kubernetes and bare metal is critical when designing scalable, high-performance systems. For some workloads, one may be enough—but for others, combining both is the best path forward.

If your application needs both maximum performance and modern orchestration, bare metal Kubernetes might be the right move.

When you’re ready to upgrade to a dedicated bare metal server—or upgrade your server hosting—Liquid Web can help. Our dedicated server hosting options have been leading the industry for decades, because they’re fast, secure, and completely reliable. Choose your favorite OS and the management tier that works best for you.

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