Best Bare Metal Server Providers for Ansible

Platform9 Private Cloud Director turns existing servers and storage into a fully featured private cloud. It provides a fast and efficient method for organizations to migrate away from VMware, with minimal disruption. Enterprise IT teams get a familiar virtualization management experience and a true drop-in replacement for VMware vSphere features, offering all critical enterprise features out of the box: Virtual Machine (VM) High Availability, live migration (vMotion equivalent), Dynamic Resource Rebalancing (VMware DRS equivalent), VM cloning, snapshots, templates, software-defined networking, and secure multi-tenancy. Unlike other solutions that may require proprietary hyperconverged infrastructure or re-platforming to Kubernetes, Private Cloud Director works with existing environments—including servers from Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and storage systems from NetApp, Tintri, Pure Storage, and more. Private Cloud Director can be deployed as a fully self-managed solution, a SaaS-managed service, or in air-gapped environments, giving IT teams complete control over their operating model. With Platform9’s free vJailbreak tool, enterprises can perform automated migrations of entire VMware vSphere clusters to Private Cloud Director—including complex VM configurations, multiple datastores, and advanced network policies—at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional approaches. Private Cloud Director supports both VMs and container workloads on a single unified platform, enabling a gradual transition to cloud-native architecture without disrupting current operations. Private Cloud Director can be deployed flexibly as a fully self-managed solution, a SaaS-managed service, or in air-gapped environments.

As a global IaaS solutions provider, phoenixNAP helps organizations of different sizes meet their IT performance, security, and scalability needs. Delivered from strategic edge locations in the U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America, phoenixNAP's solutions are globally available, enabling businesses reach their target locales. Its colocation, HaaS, private and hybrid cloud, backup, disaster recovery, and security services are available on an opex-friendly model, providing flexibility and cost-efficiency. Based on world-class technologies, they provide redundancy, security, and advanced connectivity. Companies of all verticals and sizes can leverage phoenixNAP infrastructure for their evolving IT requirements at any stage of growth.

Self-service, remote deployment of operating systems such as Windows, CentOS, ESXi, and Ubuntu on physical servers transforms your data center into a bare metal cloud environment. This Metal-As-A-Service (MAAS) solution enables provisioning for a variety of systems, offering on-demand server capabilities alongside remote edge cluster management. With comprehensive infrastructure monitoring and discovery features, it seamlessly integrates with tools like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, SALT, and Juju, ensuring rapid installations from scratch. Supporting VMware ESXi, Windows, CentOS, RHEL, and Ubuntu, it allows for the creation of customized images with pre-installed applications, as well as configurations for disk and network settings. The platform utilizes an API-driven approach for essential services such as DHCP, DNS, PXE, and IPAM, while a REST API facilitates streamlined provisioning processes. Furthermore, it incorporates LDAP user authentication and role-based access control (RBAC) to enhance security measures. Hardware testing and commissioning are integral parts of the solution, which is designed to deliver the quickest operating system installation times in the industry, thanks to its highly optimized image-based installer. MAAS is compatible with all certified servers from leading vendors and efficiently discovers servers located in racks, chassis, and broader data center networks, while also supporting major system BMCs and chassis controllers. The combination of these features allows organizations to manage their infrastructure more effectively and drive operational efficiency.