The Return of Bare Metal?

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Sep 17, 2025

Todd Robinson, Founder and President of OpenMetal.io, is passionate about advancing bare metal infrastructure. He explores how AI workloads and digital sovereignty are driving a return to bare metal solutions. Organizations are discovering cost advantages and greater control, especially for long-running applications. The discussion highlights OpenMetal's innovative open-source approach utilizing Ceph and OpenStack. As businesses reassess public cloud economics, Robinson shares insights on migrating workloads and embracing a future of flexible infrastructure.

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ANECDOTE

OpenMetal Origin Story

Todd built OpenMetal by spinning out systems used for years at InMotion Hosting.
Those systems manage bare metal, large networks, and autonomous private clouds for customers.

INSIGHT

Drivers Reigniting Bare Metal Demand

AI, larger data needs, and steady-state cloud usage are driving renewed demand for bare metal.
Many mature workloads prefer predictable, efficient hardware over hyperscaler elasticity.

INSIGHT

Steady Usage Undermines Cloud Elasticity Value

Many companies run at a steady-state usage pattern rather than huge spikes.
Paying for hyperscaler elasticity they rarely use drives interest in alternatives.

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Todd Robinson, Founder and President of OpenMetal.io, discusses the resurgence of bare metal infrastructure driven by AI workloads, digital sovereignty requirements, and companies reassessing public cloud economics. The conversation explores how organizations are finding cost and control advantages in bare metal solutions, particularly for long-running applications. It examines OpenMetal's open-source approach using technologies like Ceph and OpenStack to deliver flexible infrastructure alternatives.

SHOW: 959

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SHOW NOTES:

OpenMetal website

Topic 1 - Welcome to the show. Tell us about your background, and you developed a passion around bare metal and cloud services?

Topic 2 - Between AI (GPU rental), digital sovereignty initiatives, and even virtualization alternatives, it feels like bare metal is having a resurgence. Give some a sense of what the demands for bare metal solutions look like today?

Topic 3 - As companies understand the economics of having used public cloud services, are there certain use-cases that become immediately obvious where more private, hosted, bare metal services just make more sense?

Topic 4 - OpenMetal is based on open source technologies like Ceph and OpenStack. How important to customers about the technologies under their applications, or do the economics and control aspects play a bigger role in their decisions?

Topic 5 - I’m often asked if there is a model about when it makes more sense to use on-demand service vs. more fixed services. Is there a rule of thumb (e.g. longevity of an application, amount of change, etc.) that you’ve found drives the most success at picking the right environment for applications?

Topic 6 - OpenMetal could be described as a public or private cloud service. Do you find that there is still the stigma over “private cloud” that we saw when the hyperscalers were initially growing so quickly?

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