Also known as: Bare metal
A bare-metal server is a single physical machine used entirely by one tenant, with no hypervisor or shared virtualization layer sitting between the user and the hardware.1
Overview
The term contrasts with virtualized cloud instances, where many tenants share one physical box through a hypervisor. On bare metal there is no virtualization overhead and no “noisy neighbor” competing for the same CPU and disk — you get the whole machine’s performance and direct access to hardware features such as specific CPU instructions, NUMA layout, or an attached GPU.
Modern “bare-metal cloud” offerings rent such machines by the hour with cloud-style provisioning APIs, blending dedicated hardware with on-demand billing. That gives much of the flexibility of a cloud instance while preserving the predictability of a single-tenant box. Because nothing sits between you and the silicon, bare metal is also the usual foundation for running your own virtualization or container stack on top.
The cost is responsibility and lead time: you own the operating system and its upkeep, and physical provisioning is slower than spinning up a virtual machine — though bare-metal cloud has narrowed that gap to minutes.
Trade-offs
The three common tenancy models trade performance against price and convenience:
| Model | Tenancy | Virtualization | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bare metal | One tenant | None imposed | Predictable performance, hardware access |
| VPS | Shared host | Hypervisor slice | Cost-sensitive, bursty workloads |
| Shared hosting | Many per OS | None (OS-level) | Simple sites, minimal control |
Bare metal is the right call when you need predictable performance, full control of the hardware, or you intend to run your own virtualization on top. A dedicated server is essentially a long-lease bare-metal box; a VPS is the shared, cheaper alternative.
Where it fits
Within infrastructure as a service, bare metal is the lowest-abstraction rung — the closest a rented machine gets to one you own. GopherTrunk runs the same on bare metal as on a VPS; the deciding factor is whether you also need a real radio front end attached, which favors local hardware, or whether the box merely stores and serves decoded calls, where a shared VPS is cheaper.
Sources
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Bare-metal server — Wikipedia, on single-tenant physical servers and bare-metal cloud. ↩