The Bare Metal Myth: Why VMs Now Win for Containers
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Virtual machines have largely caught up to bare metal servers in performance after 25 years of virtualization evolution, making VMs the better choice for most container deployments. VMs offer significant operational advantages for running Kubernetes at scale, including better isolation, easier dynamic scaling, simplified management, and improved security. While bare metal still makes sense for ultra-low-latency applications (like financial trading) and some AI/edge use cases, 90-95% of workloads benefit more from virtualization's operational efficiencies. Major cloud providers run their Kubernetes services on VMs for good reason: the negligible performance difference is outweighed by benefits in multitenancy, resource utilization, and cost-effectiveness.
Table of contents
A Brief History of Virtualization: From Bare Metal to VMsWhy VMs Excel for Running Kubernetes at ScaleBare Metal vs. Virtualization: Which Is Best for Specific Use Cases?Making the ChoiceSort: