IBM's SoftLayer now offers new bare metal servers deployable in under 30 minutes and charged by the hour, providing customers with raw server performance for compute-intensive workloads.
The hourly bare metal servers either stand alone or integrate with other SoftLayer bare metal, virtual, storage and networking services as part of the global SoftLayer private network.
"As businesses deploy more powerful workloads in the cloud, there is increased demand for performance with even shorter demand cycles," the company claims. "Our new hourly bare metal servers are designed to hit the sweet spot of how much power they need, how long they need it, at price points that make sense.”
Customers can choose between CentOS, Red Hat, Free BSD or Ubuntu configurations. Post-deployment customers can customise servers further with additional OS or application installations.
The hourly bare metal servers are available now in Europe through SoftLayer's Amsterdam and London data centres.