Overview
What is Metal Cloud
Metal Cloud is a cloud service that allows you to rent physical servers with integrated GPUs from FPT. These servers are dedicated to you and are not shared with other tenants.
You can access the server with full hardware control without any virtualization or abstraction layer, maximizing performance for compute-intensive workloads.
How is Metal Cloud different from a Cloud Server (Virtual Machine) instance?
Metal Cloud provides direct access to a dedicated server with no "noisy neighbors".
Compared to Cloud Server instances deployed in a virtualized cloud environment, Bare Metal GPU Servers allow unrestricted access to the underlying physical server, making them suitable even for the most resource-intensive workloads.
How does Metal Cloud work?
Metal Cloud provides dedicated physical servers with GPUs on which you can install and run your applications.
This setup is especially useful when you need stable, high-performance infrastructure to meet demanding workloads such as AI/ML model training or custom orchestration.
How long does it take to provision a Bare Metal GPU Server?
When using FPT images, deployment is expected to succeed in about 20 minutes.
If the custom image size is large or too many servers are created at the same time, the deployment may take longer.
What advanced use cases does Metal Cloud support?
- AI/ML workloads: Model training, fine-tuning, and inference, especially for large-scale data processing.
- Custom orchestration: Technologies such as Kubernetes for containerized environments, Slurm for workload management, and other custom setups for complex applications.
- High Performance Computing (HPC): Simulation, scientific computing, real-time data processing, and applications requiring dedicated resources.
What features does Metal Cloud currently support?
Metal Cloud supports a wide range of cloud features:
- OS images including FPT images for AI.
- Startup scripts.
- Preloaded SSH keys or password setup.
- Networking: additional IPs, subnets, Network ACL for security.
More features will be added in the near future, stay tuned!
What storage options does Metal Cloud provide?
Bare Metal GPU Servers come with 1 NVMe local storage.
- Block storage service is not supported.
- File storage service (high-performance tier) is supported.
Does Bare Metal Cloud support RAID?
Yes, local storage supports RAID 0 and RAID 1 on the FPT Cloud Portal GUI using a hardware RAID controller.
More RAID options will be added in the future.
Which regions is Metal Cloud available in?
Metal Cloud is available in the Hanoi 2 (Vietnam) and Tokyo (Japan) regions.
How is Metal Cloud billed?
- Reservation: Resources are capped according to demand at a fixed price, paid upfront (in part or in full) or afterward. Billing cycles are monthly (3-9) or yearly (1-5).
- Pay-as-you-go (PAYG): You use resources without initial limits and pay afterward. The amount billed typically increases by day or hour.
Does FPT charge for a Bare Metal GPU Server in the stopped state?
Yes, an instance in the "stopped" state is still reserving the server for you, so charges will continue to accrue until you release the server. If you do not want to be charged further for the server, delete the server on the customer-facing FPT Cloud Portal.
You will also be charged for other services and resources attached to the Bare Metal GPU Server.
How is Metal Cloud billing different from a Cloud Server (Virtual Machine) instance?
The main difference is that powering off a Bare Metal GPU Server does not affect the billing cycle.
This means that a server billed by the hour will be charged normally whether the server is on or off. Billing only stops when the server is deleted.