The Cybersecurity SaaS-pocalypse: Open-Source SIEM on Bare Metal

Description and use

Organizations eliminated costly cloud SIEMs by moving log storage and processing to on‑prem NVMe servers, cutting expenses by 96.7 % and removing egress taxes.

Problem

Organizations face exploding security telemetry volumes, making traditional SaaS SIEMs financially unsustainable and vulnerable during attacks due to per‑GB pricing and cloud egress costs.

Outcome

By decoupling compute from storage and moving to bare‑metal NVMe, SOCs reduced annual TCO from ~$180,000 to ~$6,000, a 96.7% savings, while eliminating cloud egress taxes and ensuring real‑time log ingestion.

Workflow

• 1. Deploy Wazuh, OpenSearch, and MinIO on dedicated bare‑metal NVMe servers.
• 2. Configure fluent‑bit to tail AI agent logs, drop debug noise, and forward all logs to MinIO.
• 3. Set fluent‑bit to forward only critical events to OpenSearch for real‑time analysis.
• 4. Store long‑term logs in MinIO cold storage, eliminating egress costs.
• 5. Monitor write IOPS to ensure unthrottled performance and maintain data sovereignty.

Evidence

Commercial SIEM platforms utilize data-volume pricing models averaging roughly $1,800 per GB per day, annually.

Source

The 96.67% Cost Savings Matrix: Commercial SaaS SIEM: 100GB/day = ~$180,000/year. ServerMO Bare Metal Pivot: ~$6,000/year.

Source