Future of Bare Metal Edge

[Perttu]

We're running our edges on a dedicated two-node ESXi cluster, which is made of over 7 years old server hardware. There is nothing wrong in it, as those old virtualisation servers are beefy enough to run the current edge loads smoothly.

Still as a modernisation and energy saving effort I was thinking of disposing those dinosaurs and get instead few modern pizza boxes to do the job, and because I'm dedicating these host for edges I thought taking the bare metal way.

However the list of supported NIC hardware for BM edge is ridiculously old. There are no modern ConnectX6 series card from Nvidia, no any Intel E810s, or any Broadcoms at all. Should I take that as a hint "don't choose BM Edges, we're not updating them anymore to support any modern hardware"?     

I'm referring to a list https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX/4.0/installation/GUID-14C3F618-AB8D-427E-AC88-F05D1A04DE40.htm...

[the-thanos]

Hello Perttu,

One thing about any BM platform is lifecycle management and h/w support (limited and/or slow to catch up). The VM Edges will depend on a broader h/w support that vSphere provides, plus you can create/delete/scale as needed, since they are VM based. If you need very fast convergence times and throughput with services, then BM is a better alternative. VMware will not stop support or development of the BM platform (AFAIK), it just takes more time to support newer h/w. I cannot disclose future releases, but keep an eye on the coming NSX 4.x releases. I would expect newer NIC models (BTW- Mellanox CX6 is supported today, it's not "nvidia" labeled, but it's the same -unless I'm mistaken).

If you're happy (throughput and stateful services) with 7-yr old h/w running Edge VMs on vSphere, then why change to BM? 🙂 I like the K.I.S mentality (Keep It Simple).

regards,

Thanos