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Frequently asked questions about Edge Bare Metal

Get answers to frequently asked questions about your Lumen® Edge Bare Metal service.

Each network is assigned its own IPv4 subnet (/29-/24). The first three IP addresses are assigned to the upstream routers. Any additional IP addresses are unassigned and can be assigned as you see fit on your servers.

  • 1st IP – router default gateway
  • 2nd IP – reserved for router1
  • 3rd IP – reserved for router2
  • Additional IPs - assigned to servers

Users can easily add additional IP addresses by following the process outlined here.

Each Edge Bare Metal server has four 25-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, with two interfaces on each of two separate NIC cards. By default, all four interfaces are placed into a single link access group (LAG) or bond utilizing LACP for individual link monitoring.

Each dedicated server connects to two switches: 2x 25GE to switch A and 2x 25GE to switch B. These switches are in the same physical rack as the server. Each of these switches have multiple 100GE fiber connections to multiple other switches in the data center that create an ethernet switching fabric. This switching fabric can sustain full traffic capacity with any single switch or link failure.

Note: This switch redundancy means that a server can always expect up to 50 Gbps of throughput, even if one of its directly connected switches were to fail. While a dedicated server does have 100 Gbps of total bandwidth capacity, half of that is redundant.

Egress from the data centers switch fabric to either the Internet (AS3356) or the MPLS IP VPN network (AS3549) is provided by two diverse provider edge (PE) routers—one pair for each network. These PE pairs connect to a corresponding pair of switches in the fabric. Traffic can be forwarded through both PEs and will switch over automatically upon failure of a PE, switch, or the link between them. This dual-routing path is important to remember when using traceroutes or other reporting. PE1 may be active today but PE2 becomes the active path tomorrow.

Edge Bare Metal allows you the benefit of self-service management of costs associated with your bare metal servers. You are automatically entered into a pay-as-you go model that allows the flexibility to provision or delete servers on-demand, as your budget and business needs change. You can also enter into a term-based billing contract with spend discounting. To learn more about term-commit options, contact your Lumen account specialist.

Billing starts once a bare metal server has been successfully provisioned. You are billed based on the configuration selections outlined above for each bare metal server instance created. You will be invoiced monthly, in arrears, for your total Edge Services billable charges for active services during that billing period.

The power states and applicable billing for an Edge Bare Metal server are as follows:

  • Provision a bare metal server: starts billing.
  • On/Running: continuously bills at the hourly rate based on the server configuration and applicable services tied to the server.
  • Stop: Stops the server but doesn't stop billing.
  • Delete a bare metal server: ends billing for that server.
     

Lumen charges for deleted servers based on the configuration, network charges, and other applicable services tied to the server during the up time of the server during a billing cycle.

For current features, pricing estimates, and supported currencies, visit the Edge Price Estimator.

Provisioning a bare metal server has multiple cost factors which are outlined below:

  • Location: the hourly cost for a bare metal server can vary by location. Use the Edge Price Estimator to see the various hourly prices per location.
  • Bare metal server configurations: the hourly cost for a bare metal server can vary by the configuration type. Use the Edge Price Estimator to see the various hourly price per configuration type.
  • Bare metal operating system: the licensing cost for a bare metal server can vary by the operating system type and version. Use the Edge Price Estimator to see the various licensing cost per OS type. Currently, we offer only free, open-source operating systems, but will be adding more operating systems in future releases.
  • Network type: the cost for a bare metal server can vary by network type and usage. Currently, we only offer public internet, but will be adding more network types in future releases.


You can view your Edge Bare Metal invoices online. Control Center lists your previous 24 months of bills. (You can also access Control Center directly from the Edge Services portal under the Support tab.)