Optimizing Production Performance with Rackspace OnMetal Dedicated Hardware

Rackspace OnMetal is a dedicated hardware service that provides server instances running OpenStack, specifically designed for production environments. Unlike multi-tenant virtualized environments, OnMetal offers seamless performance and reliability, making it an ideal choice for companies and organizations that require highly optimized and resource-intensive applications.

Benefits of Rackspace OnMetal

The team behind Rackspace OnMetal believes that traditional multi-tenant virtualized cloud environments may not be suitable for large-scale and high-quality production applications. The size of your server footprint, consistency in response times, and the cost of tooling complexity are all critical factors to consider. When it comes to production environments, the differences can be substantial.

Canonical Production Applications

High-traffic Django and Ruby on Rails applications can benefit greatly from OnMetal dedicated hardware. The configurations are meticulously optimized for web heads, caching nodes, and databases. For example, Redis and Elasticsearch perform exceptionally well on OnMetal servers, especially in high-RAM configurations. These applications require robust and consistent performance, and OnMetal delivers precisely that.

Database Performance and Benchmark Results

OnMetal is particularly suited for database environments. The performance benchmarks of PostgreSQL running on an OnMetal High I/O instance have shown significant improvements over pure memory-based PostgreSQL running on tmfs in RAM. LSI flash cards under a software-RAIDed ext4 filesystem have revealed surprising and wonderful results, making PostgreSQL CPU-bound rather than I/O-bound. This optimization allows for more efficient use of resources and higher overall performance.

Flexibility and Scalability

Rackspace OnMetal is not an either/or proposition. It is designed to be used in conjunction with regular virtual machines (VMs) on the same network. By deploying critical and cost-sensitive parts of your production infrastructure on dedicated OnMetal hardware, you can ensure optimal performance, while using VMs for a multitude of auxiliary tasks. This hybrid approach maximizes efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Conclusion

In summary, Rackspace OnMetal dedicated hardware offers a powerful and flexible solution for production environments. Its optimized configurations, high performance, and flexibility make it an attractive choice for developers and organizations working with large-scale applications. Whether you're running high-traffic web applications or demanding database workloads, Rackspace OnMetal is a reliable and high-performance option that can help you achieve your production goals.

For more information and to explore the capabilities of Rackspace OnMetal, visit the official Rackspace website.