Curious to know what the experiences are for those who are sticking to bare metal. Would like to better understand what keeps such admins from migrating to containers, Docker, Podman, Virtual Machines, etc. What keeps you on bare metal in 2025?
Containers run on “bare metal” in exactly the same way other processes on your system do. You can even see them in your process list FFS. They’re just running in different cgroup’s that limit access to resources.
Yes, I’ll die on this hill.
But, but, docker, kubernetes, hyper-scale convergence and other buzzwords from the 2010’s! These fancy words can’t just mean resource and namespace isolation!
In all seriousness, the isolation provided by containers is significant enough that administration of containers is different from running everything in the same OS. That’s different in a good way though, I don’t miss the bad old days of everything on a single server in the same space. Anyone else remember the joys of Windows Small Business Server? Let’s run Active Directory, Exchange and MSSQL on the same box. No way that will lead to prob… oh shit, the RAM is on fire.
…oh shit, the RAM is on fire.
The RAM. The RAM. The 🐏 is on fire. We don’t need no water let the mothefuxker burn.
Burn mothercucker, burn.
(Thanks phone for the spelling mistakes that I’m leaving).
kubernetes
Kubernetes isn’t just resource isolation, it encourages splitting services across hardware in a cluster. So you’ll get more latency than VMs, but you get to scale the hardware much more easily.
Those terms do mean something, but they’re a lot simpler than execs claim they are.
I love using it at work. Its a great tool to get everything up and running kinda like ansible. Paired with containerization it can make applications more “standard” and easy to spin back up.
That being said, for a home server, it feels like overkill. I dont need my resources spread out so far. I dont want to keep updating my kub and container setup with each new iteration. Its just not fun (to me).
Speak english doctor! But really is this a fancy way of saying its ok to docker all the things?
Move over, bud. That’s my hill to die on, too.
Learning this fact is what got me to finally dockerize my setup
I consider them unnecessary layers of abstraction. Why do I need to fiddle with Docker Compose to install Immich, Vaultwarden etc.? Wouldn’t it be simpler if I could just run
sudo apt install immich vaultwarden, just like I can dosudo apt install qbittorrent-noxtoday? I don’t think there’s anything that prohibits them from running on the same bare metal, actually I think they’d both run as well as in Docker (if not better because of lack of overhead)!Both your examples actually include their own bloat to accomplish the same thing that Docker would. They both bundle the libraries they depend on as part of the build
Idk about Immich but Vaultwarden is just a Cargo project no? Cargo statically links crates by default but I think can be configured to do dynamic linking too. The Rust ecosystem seems to favour static linking in general just by convention.
Yes, that was my point, you (generally) link statically in Rust because that resolves dependency issues between the different applications you need to run. Cost is a slightly bigger, bloatier binary, but generally it’s a very good tradeoff because a slightly bigger binary isn’t an inconvenience these days.
Docker achieves the same for everything, including dynamically linked projects that default to using shared libraries which can have dependency nightmares, other binaries that are being called, etc. It doesn’t virtualize an entire OS unless you’re using it on MacOS or Windows, so the performance overhead is not as big as people seem to think (disk space overhead, though… can get slightly bigger). It’s also great for dev environments because you can have different devs using whatever the fuck they prefer as their main OS and Docker will make everyone’s environment the same.
I generally wouldn’t put a Rust/Cargo project in docker by default since it’s pretty rare to run into external dependency issues with those, but might still do it for the tooling (docker compose, mainly).
It’s not just libraries in a docker
True, Docker does it better because any executables also have redundant copies. Running two different node applications on bare metal, they can still disagree about the node version, etc.
The actual old-school bloat-free way to do it is shared libraries of course. And that shit sucks.
Have done it both ways. Will never go back to bare metal. Dependency hell forced multiple clean installs down to bootloader.
The only constant is change.
KISS
The more complicated the machine the more chances for failure.
Remote management plus bare metal just works, it’s very simple, and you get the maximum out of the hardware.
Depending on your use case that could be very important
Ok I’m arguing for containers/VMs and granted I do this for a living… I’m a systems architect so I build VMs and containers pretty much all the time time at work… but having just one sorta beefy box at home that I can run lots of different things is the way to go. Plus I like to tinker with things so when I screw something up, I can get back to a known state so much easier.
Just having all these things sandboxed makes it SO much easier.
My servers and NAS were created long before Docker was a thing, and as I am running them on a rolling release distribution there never was a reason to change anything. It works perfectly fine the way it is, and it will most likely run perfectly fine the next 10+ years too.
Well I am planning, when I find the time to research a good successor, to replace my aging HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 that I use as Homeserver/NAS. Maybe I will then setup everything clean and migrate the services to docker/podman/whatever is fancy then. But most likely I will only transfer all the disks and keep the old system running on newer hardware. Life is short…
Why would I want add overheard and complexity to my system when I don’t need to? I can totally see legitimate use cases for docker, and work for purposes I use VMs constantly. I just don’t see a benefit to doing so at home.
Main benefit of Docker for home is Docker compose IMO. Makes it so easy to reuse your configuration
Then check IaC, for example with Terraform or Ansible
It’s just another system to maintain, another link in the chain that can fail.
I run all my services on my personal gaming pc.
pff, you call using an operating system bare metal? I run my apps as unikernels on a grid of Elbrus chips I bought off a dockworker in Kamchatka.
and even that’s overkill. I prefer synthesizing my web apps into VHDL and running them directly on FPGAs.
until my ASIC shuttle arrives from Taipei, naturally, then I bond them directly onto Ethernet sockets.
/uj not really but that’d be sick as hell.
I just imagine what the output of any program would be. Follow me, set yourself free!
It depends on the service and the desired level of it stack.
I generally will run services directly on things like a raspberry pi because VMs and containers offer added complexity that isn’t really suitable for the task.
At work, I run services in docker in VMs because the benefits far outweigh the complexity.
This reminds me of a question I saw a couple years ago. It was basically why would you stick with bare metal over running Proxmox with a single VM.
It kinda stuck with me and since then I’ve reimaged some of my bare metal servers with exactly that. It just makes backup and restore/snapshots so much easier. It’s also really convenient to have a web interface to manage the computer
Probably doesn’t work for everyone but it works for me
It’s so simple that it takes so much less time, one day I may move to Podman but I need to have the time to learn. I host Jellyfin
Im a hobbiest who just learned how to self host my own static website on a spare laptop over the summer. I went with what I knew and was comfortable with which is a fresh install of linux and installing from the apt package manager.
As im getting more serious im starting to take another look at docker. Unforunately my OS package manager only has old outdated versions of docker I may need to reinstall with like ubuntu/debian LTS server something with more cutting edge software in repo. I don’t care much for building from scratch and navigating dependency roulette.
What OS are you using?
Linux Mint 22
I guess it isn’t the most user friendly process, but you can add the official Docker repo and get an up-to-date version without compiling or anything. You just want to make sure to uninstall any Docker packages that you installed before, before you start.
https://linuxiac.com/how-to-install-docker-on-linux-mint-22/
They can but - if their current setup meets their needs - why? There ain’t nothing wrong with having a few simple spare laptops, each an isolated environment for a few simple home server tasks each.
Don’t get me wrong - I too advocate for docker, particularly on new builds, or as a relatively turnkey solution to get started for novice friends, but the best setup is the one that works, and they sound like they got theirs where they want it.
…because that isn’t what they said. They said that they are getting more serious and now looking at Docker, but the outdated version in the Mint repo is preventing them from exploring that any further. So I offered a method that I know works without any of the “dependency roulette” that they were concerned about, while also giving a disclaimer that it isn’t exactly noob-friendly. 🤷♂️
Fair point. I think my eyes glossed over the part where they said they where taking a second look at docker (but caught the rest about rebuilding the OS in general). My sincere apologies 😓😅
Here’s my homelab journey: https://bower.sh/homelab
Basically, containers and GPU is annoying to deal with, GPU pass through to a VM is even more annoying. Most modern hobbyist GPUs also do not support splitting your GPU. At the end of the day, it’s a bunch of tinkering which is valuable if that’s your goal. I learned what I wanted, now I’m back to arch running everything with systemd and quadlet
My NAS will stay on bare metal forever. Any complications there is something I really don’t want. Passthrough of drives/PCIe-devices works fine for most things, but I won’t use it for ZFS.
As for services, I really hate using Docker images with a burning passion. I’m not trusting anyone else to make sure the container images are secure - I want the security updates directly from my distribution’s repositories, and I want them fully automated, and I want that inside any containers. Having Nixos build and launch containers with systemd-nspawn solves some of it. The actual docker daemon isn’t getting anywhere near my systems, but I do have one or two OCI images running. Will probably migrate to small VMs per-service once I get new hardware up and running.
Additionally, I never found a source of container images I feel like I can trust long term. When I grab a package from Debian or RHEL, I know that package will keep working without any major changes to functionality or config until I upgrade to the next major. A container? How long will it get updates? How frequently? Will the config format or environment variables or mount points change? Will a threat actor assume control of the image? (Oh look, all the distros actually enforce GPG signatures in their repos!)
So, what keeps me on bare metal? Keeping my ZFS pools safe. And then just keeping away from the OCI ecosystem in general, the grass is far greener inside the normal package repositories.
A NAS as bare metal makes sense.
It can then correctly interact with the raw disks.You could pass an entire HBA card through to a VM, but I feel like it should be horses for courses.
Let a storage device be a storage device, and let a hypervisor be a hypervisor.
