A new survey of 576 IT leaders conducted by Diamanti, a provider of bare-metal servers optimized for Kubernetes clusters running Docker containers, finds over third (34%) plan to allocate at least $100,000 to container project this year.
Nearly half (47%) of the respondents say they also plan to deploy containers in a production environment, while another 12 percent say they already have.
A total of 44 percent of survey respondents say that in some instances of containers running on bare metal servers will replace virtual machines. Most containers today run on top of virtual machines running in the cloud or on-premises. But as cluster platforms such as Kubernetes mature, there is growing interest in deploying containers on bare-metal servers to both reduce the size of the overall software stack and reduce licensing fees associated with commercial instances of virtual machine software such as VMware.
The top reasons for employing containers on bare-metal servers are reducing management overhead (59%), performance (39%) and VMware licensing fees (38%). Over half (55 percent) spend more than $100,000 annually on VMware licensing fees, and over one third (34 percent) spend more than $250,000 annually on VMware licensing fees.
The survey also finds that the two platforms with the most to lose during the transition to containers are VMware (40 percent) and Microsoft (20 percent). Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Docker, Inc. have the most to gain, the survey finds. The latest Diamanti survey backs up similar findings from a similar survey of solution providers the company conducted earlier this year as part of the launch of its channel program.
Diamanti CEO Jeff Chou says it is unlikely containers running on bare-metal servers will eliminate the need for virtual machines any time soon.
“There’s a lot of inertia,” says Chou.
But it is clear many more containerized application workloads will soon be running on bare-metal servers, says Chou. While many IT organizations today may no longer have the skills required to configure bare-metal servers, the Diamanti servers are designed from the ground up to be spun up in as little as 15 minutes, says Chou.
The one thing the Diamanti survey makes clear is that providers of virtual machines have a battle on their hands because it’s no longer safe to assume that most application workloads are going to be deployed on some form of a virtual machine.
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