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. Modern “bare-metal cloud” offerings rent such machines by the hour with cloud-style provisioning, blending dedicated hardware with on-demand billing.
Trade-offs
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 virtual private server is the shared, cheaper alternative. Within infrastructure as a service, bare metal is the lowest-abstraction rung. 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.
Sources
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Bare-metal server — Wikipedia, on single-tenant physical servers. ↩