Release notes for IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers

Use the release notes to learn the latest updates to IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers that are grouped by date.

March 2024

26 March 2024

NVMe support for RHEL, Rocky Linux, and CentOS: IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers with NVMe SSD now support RHEL, Rocky Linux, and CentOS. For more information about NVMe, see NVMe solid-state drives (SSD).
Support for CentOS Stream 9: IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers now supports CentOS Stream 9. For more information, see CentOS Stream 9.

22 March 2024

OSNEXUS (QuantaStor) 6.2: OSNEXUS (QuantaStor) 6.2 is now available for IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers. For more information, see IBM Cloud QuantaStor Provisioning Guide Overview.

15 March 2024

Intel® 'Speed Select' for the Sapphire Rapids processors: You can now select the available core count and clock speed of a 8474C processor when you order a Sapphire Rapids-based IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers.

January 2024

25 January 2024

Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support (Select availability): Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs for bare metal servers are now available only in the DAL, MAD, TOK, TOR, and WDC regions. For more information, see Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support.

December 2023

15 December 2023

SSL Certificate Order is deprecated: As of 15 April 2024, SSL Certificate Order is no longer available for purchase. As of 15 December 2024, SSL Certificate Order is no longer supported for new orders or reorders. Only existing certificates that are not expired are still available for you to download, reissue, or revoke. For more information, see Deprecation of SSL Certificates.

06 December 2023

Intel&reg Sapphire Rapids-based bare metal servers now support GPUs: When you provision a Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU-based bare metal server, you can now select GPUs.

November 2023

27 November 2023

Mirrored M.2 NVMe OS boot drives now support VMWare ESXi: When you provision a bare metal server with VMWare ESXi, you can now select mirrored M.2 NVMe OS boot drives.

October 2023

27 October 2023

Microsoft® SQL Server 2019 and 2022: Classic infrastructure bare metal and virutal servers now support Microsoft SQL Server 2019 and 2022.

13 October 2023

Intel SGX support for Sapphire Rapids-based Lenovo and Supermicro bare metal servers: Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU-based Lenovo and Supermicro bare metal servers now support Intel Software Guards Extensions (SGX). For more information about provisioning a bare metal server with SGX, see Provisioning a bare metal server with Intel® Software Guard Extension architecture.

09 October 2023

cPanel support for Rocky Linux 8 for Classic bare metal and virtual servers: Rocky Linux 8 now supports cPanel as an add-on for Classic bare metal and virtual servers. For more information about cPanel, see cPanel.

July 2023

10 July 2023

Mirrored M.2 SATA boot drives (VMWare ESXi only): You can now order mirrored M.2 SATA boot drives drives. To select this drive option, you need to select VMWare ESXi as the boot OS and the PCIe add-on.

May 2023

15 May 2023

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 (RHEL 9): IBM Cloud® server software now supports RHEL 9 as an OS option for bare metal servers. For more information, see the Bare metal servers tab in Supported operating systems for IBM Cloud® server software.

11 May 2023

RAID controllers to support Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs: Two new RAID controllers are available to support Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs. For more information about RAID, see About RAID.

March 2023

28 March 2023

Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support (Beta): Intel Sapphire Rapids CPUs now support Debian 11, Microsoft Windows 19 & 2022, Rocky Linux 8, Ubuntu 22.04. For more information, see Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support.

February 2023

14 February 2023

Ubuntu 22.04: IBM Cloud® server software now supports Ubuntu 22.04 as an OS option for bare metal servers. For more information, see the Bare metal servers tab in Supported operating systems for IBM Cloud® server software.

January 2023

10 January 2023

Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support (Beta): You can now select an Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU when you provision a bare metal server. For more information, see Intel Sapphire Rapids CPU support.

09 January 2023

Debian 11: IBM Cloud® server software now supports Debian 11 as an OS option for bare metal servers. For more information, see the Bare metal servers tab in Supported operating systems for IBM Cloud® server software.

March 2022

08 March 2022

Windows server 2022: IBM Cloud® server software now supports Windows® server 2022 as an OS option for bare metal servers. For more information, see the Bare metal servers tab in Supported operating systems for IBM Cloud® server software.

December 2021

02 December 2021

Custom image template add-ons

Custom image templates now support the following add-ons. For more information, see the supported add-ons section in About bare metal custom image templates.

McAfee (free license add-on)
MySQL (free license add-on)
Microsoft SQL Server
R1Soft client

You can now migrate a bare metal server by using add-on software such as cPanel, MS SQL Server, Plesk, or R1Soft Backup Agent. For more information, see Migrating bare metal servers with add-on software.

October 2021

05 October 2021

Intel Xeon 8260 CPU: You can now select the Intel Xeon 8260 CPU when you provision a bare metal server. For more information, see Bare metal server options.

February 2021

01 February 2020

25 Gbps port space is now available: You can now use 25 Gbps port speed on select Cascade Lake processor servers. For more information about 25 Gbps port speed, see the 25 Gbps port speed section of the Bare Metal Servers Network options topic.

Aug 2020

12 August 2020

Intel Xeon 6250 CPU: You can now select the Intel Xeon 6250 CPU when you provision a bare metal server. For more information, see Bare metal server options.

10 August 2020

Custom images templates now available: Image templates provide an imaging option for IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers. With Bare Metal Servers custom image templates, you can capture an image of a bare metal server to replicate its configuration with minimal changes in the order process. For more information, see About bare metal custom image templates.

July 2020

22 July 2020

IBM Cloud Monitoring: IBM Cloud Monitoring collects basic Classic infrastructure and VPC virtual server metrics such as CPU usage, disk usage, network traffic, and memory. These metrics are stored in IBM Cloud Monitoring. For more information, see IBM Cloud Monitoring.

May 2020

18 May 2020

NVM solid-state drives: Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a high-performance storage protocol that supports direct connection of the memory subsystem to the CPU through the PCIe interface. The NVMe protocol capitalizes on parallel, low latency data paths to the underlying media. This protocol offers significantly higher performance and smaller latencies compared to traditional SAS and SATA protocols. For more information, see NVMe solid-state drives.

March 2020

24 March 2020

AMD CPU support: When you provision a bare metal server, AMD EPYC® "Rome" generation CPUs are now an option. Rome generation processors are high-performance multiprocessors that are based on AMD's Zen 2 architecture. The EPYC "Rome" family offers several CPU options that offer up to 48 cores per socket. For more information, see the AMD CPU support section in Bare metal server options.

February 2020

11 February 2020

Veeam backup for Office 365: Veeam backup for Office 365 protects your Office 365 data by backing up your Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business data. True data protection and RPO (recovery point objective) are not included with Office 365. Veeam provides a software-defined solution that protects Office 365, performs granular restores, and recovers data to anywhere. For more information, Veeam backup for Office 365.

October 2019

10 October 2019

Network port redundancy: Port redundancy provides networking failover by maintaining a primary and secondary network port. If the primary port fails, the secondary (redundant) port enables. For more information, see the netword redundancy section of Bare metal server options.

August 2019

05 August 2019

NVIDIA GPU support: For certain bare metal servers, you can add the processing power of NVIDIA® GPUs. When you select a bare metal server, look for GPU in the Features column on the provisioning page. For more information, see the NVIDIA GPU support section of Bare metal server options.

April 2019

02 April 2019

Cascade Lake CPU support: You can choose from the following Intel® Xeon® Cascade Lake CPUs when you provision a bare metal server. For more information, see the Intel Cascade Lake CPU support section of Bare metal server options.

March 2019

25 March 2019

Contract term pricing: IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers gives you the option to lock-in a lesser price by signing a contract term. You choose between either a 1-year or a 3-year contract. A contact term bare metal server is a great option if you know that you need hardware for the long term and makes sure that your resources are available throughout your term. When your term is over, you keep your contracted price on a month-to-month basis. For more information, see Contract term pricing for bare metal servers.

April 2018

05 April 2018

Spare pools: The Spare Pool screen in the IBM Cloud® allows users to manage the spare pool of devices associated with the account. Each device in the spare pool can be used as a backup device if more devices are needed. For more information, see Spare pools.

March 2018

26 March 2018

Intel Software Guard Extension: Intel® Software Guard Extension (SGX) is an architecture extension that is designed to increase security by using protected areas in memory that runs your sensitive code and data. For more information, see Intel Software Guard Extension.

16 March 2018

Block and file storage add-on: If you need extra storage, IBM makes it easy! You can now order block and file storage (20 - 12,000 GB) when you provision a bare metal server. Your add-on storage isn't automatically connected to your bare metal server. You need to connect the add-on storage to your bare metal server after your server provisions. For more information, see the block and file storage add-on section of Bare metal server options.

02 March 2018

Custom bare metal servers: IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers are single-tenant physical servers that provide you performance and control with low-level access to the hardware resources. You can create a custom IBM Cloud® Bare Metal Servers. For more information, see Building a custom Bare Metal Server.