Bare Metal Cloud Helps chuck-stack Build a High-Performance Hybrid Cloud at a ¼ of the Price of AWS or Azure
phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud servers featuring Intel® Xeon® 6 CPUs with E-Cores helped the founder of an ERP implementation platform build a cost-effective hybrid cloud at roughly a quarter of the 3-year price of popular public cloud services. The result: minimized recurring costs, reduced complexity, and enhanced productivity.
chuck-stack is an organization dedicated to streamlining and personalizing ERP, data management, and IT pipelines through AI, enhanced by popular open-source tools and thoughtfully designed work instructions. Its robust set of frameworks and best practices empowers small-to-medium businesses to simplify and automate otherwise complex tasks. Such optimization enables the rise of what chuck-stack calls superclerks, employees who harness automation to multiply their velocity and effectiveness.
“What makes us special? Conversational enterprise computing on an open-source technology stack. We are tired of ERPs hitting organizations with thousands of barely relevant fields that overcomplicate processes. We offer a better way for small and medium organizations to manage data, automate processes, and build superclerk talent.“
CHALLENGES
chuck-stack focuses on providing businesses with simple, cost-effective solutions and methodologies to maximize the benefits of automation. Virtualization plays a vital role in this endeavor, enabling IT teams to quickly deliver resources to the applications and workloads that need them. At first, popular public clouds like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud prove convenient as users can quickly access infrastructure and online resources for support. However, dependence on a fully virtualized infrastructure from hyperscalers quickly becomes too expensive and difficult to manage.
CSP clients often face mounting IT bills due to overprovisioned and idle resources over which they have limited visibility or control. Another widespread problem contributing to cloud waste is the lack of required skills to enforce key policies. The inability to adequately take operational responsibility for public cloud deployments swells expenses and lowers productivity. Furthermore, the growing complexity of hyperscaler environments not only shrinks the talent pool of eligible cloud management experts but also increases exposure to outside and inside threats.
“With small and medium organizations, cost and complexity are the enemy, and this is where phoenixNAP really shines: it gives me the ability to minimize the number of experts I need to hire, and you allow me to use the same tools and experts everywhere. phoenixNAP makes the cloud way more accessible to the world’s SMBs.“
SOLUTION
An article Chuck posted on chuck-stack proposes a distributed hybrid cloud paradigm that uses phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud (BMC) as the infrastructure foundation. Bare Metal Cloud is designed for infrastructure simplicity, delivering cloud-like access to workload-optimized dedicated servers - without hypervisors or vendor lock-in. Available in strategic global and edge locations worldwide, BMC lets you add bleeding-edge compute, memory, storage, and networking resources in mere minutes. The platform combines performance, stability, and ease of maintenance, making it ideal for SMBs operating in multiple locations and looking to streamline their IT.
chuck-stack’s solution allows users to test or deploy services locally and replicate them to cloud servers with a reduced software stack. Below is an overview of the environment’s design:
- Automation-driven dedicated servers by phoenixNAP provide easy access to next-gen IT resources.
- Virtualization layer created using Incus and easily managed with one tool.
- VPN overlay between virtual servers and office or mobile clients facilitated by Netbird.
Featuring groundbreaking acceleration technologies, Intel Xeon 6700-series CPUs with E-Cores supercharge AI, HPC, and other demanding workloads while maintaining steady clock speeds.
Bare Metal Cloud lets users cost-effectively add advanced compute capabilities to their environments in minutes and easily scale when needed.
“One of the things I like about phoenixNAP is that it’s the right-size solution for me, but it’s also the right price. I can take advantage of existing expertise, use the same tools everywhere, and take advantage of compute at every location. This enables me to reduce the overall cost of my infrastructure to a quarter or fifth of what I have with AWS.“
BENEFITS
By harnessing Bare Metal Cloud’s turnkey dedicated infrastructure, virtualized with Incus and privately connected via Netbird, chuck-stack built a hybrid cloud server powered by state-of-the-art CPU, RAM, and HD technologies, all at roughly 1/3 to 1/4 the 3-year cost of AWS or Azure. This deployment is easier to manage thanks to BMC’s API-driven architecture and easy cost monitoring, as well as the simplicity of Incus virtualization. Moreover, BMC runs on a robust DDoS-protected network, further securing the VPN overlay provided by Netbird. This solution enables global deployment of any application or service, while securely connecting clients to a high-performance infrastructure – with minimal recurring costs.
- Cost savings: Up to 75% saved compared to AWS.
- Flexibility: API-driven infra on an open-source stack with no hypervisor.
- High performance: Servers powered by Intel Xeon 6 CPUs with E-Cores, DDR5 memory, and NVMe storage.
- Simplicity: Easier to manage, fewer layers with fewer tools required.
- Security: VPN overlay with DDoS protection.
- Expert support: Readily available experts to solve or advise on technical issues.
“What I have used of your bare metal cloud has been amazing; what I have used of your technical customer support has been amazing. I very much look forward to working with you and the team more.“
AT•A•GLANCE
- CLIENT
chuck-stack.org - LOCATION
Round Rock, Texas, United States - BUSINESS FOCUS
Open-source ERP implementation and education for SMBs - ISSUES
- Vendor lock-in and costly premiums make hyperscale cloud computing extremely expensive for chuck-stack’s target audience.
- The complexity of platforms such as AWS increases the risk of issues like resource sprawl and requires expertise that’s difficult or costly to attain.
- SOLUTION
phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud - RESULT
- Right-sized, flexible hybrid cloud infrastructure with greater compute and storage than comparable AWS instances.
- Ability to run high-performance dedicated IT at less than a third of the cost of AWS.
- More economical compute using a high core count CPU instead of GPUs.
- Simpler environment that needs less expertise to manage.
- Easy access to support for troubleshooting or technical advice.
