---
title: "What is a bare-metal server?"
description: "A bare-metal server is a physical server with a single tenant . That is to say, a physical server of exclusive use of the client who rents it, which is not shared with other organizations or users. To..."
url: https://www.stackscale.com/blog/bare-metal-server/
date: 2023-08-03
modified: 2024-02-06
author: "Marketing Stackscale"
image: https://www.stackscale.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Bare-Metal-Server-Stackscale.jpg
categories: ["Computing"]
tags: ["Infrastructure", "Servers"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# What is a bare-metal server?

A bare-metal server is **a physical server with a single tenant**. That is to say, a physical server of exclusive use of the client who rents it, which is not shared with other organizations or users. Together with virtual servers, networking and storage, bare-metal servers are an essential part of the IaaS cloud service model.

## Bare-metal servers features and benefits

As a form of cloud computing service within the [IaaS model](https://www.stackscale.com/blog/iaas/), bare-metal servers allow companies to **delegate the cost and complexity of building and managing their own physical servers**. Moreover, they offer numerous advantages, such as:

- Full control over the physical machines.
- Server customization to match workload requirements.
- High scalability.
- Predictable, high performance (without oversubscription of resources).
- Business continuity guarantees.
- Security and regulatory compliance benefits regarding the exclusive use of servers by companies.

Furthermore, as opposed to cloud servers, bare-metal servers do not have a pre-installed hypervisor. Therefore, customers have **total freedom for implementing hypervisors and orchestrators**. Companies can either deploy their infrastructure with a virtualization system (XEN, Docker, Kubernetes, KVM, Hyper-V, Proxmox, Citrix, VMware…) or without virtualization.

## Bare-metal servers vs dedicated servers

Both terms are often used interchangeably since bare-metal servers are in fact dedicated servers delivered as a service. Nevertheless, unlike traditional dedicated servers, bare-metal servers offer shorter provisioning times and further features and benefits to companies, such as GPUs.

## Bare-metal servers in Amsterdam and Madrid

Starting at 128 GiB of RAM and 12 physical cores, and going up to 768 GiB of RAM and 52 physical cores, Stackscale’s [single-tenant, bare-metal servers](https://www.stackscale.com/products/bare-metal/) outperform traditional on-premises and public cloud solutions.

They are fully configurable and offer a level of control that matches in-house solutions. In addition to providing **predictable and consistent performance, predictable costs and 99,90% SLA Availability**. Moreover, they include direct access to specialized technical support and 24/7 server monitoring for detecting hardware and connectivity failures, among many other features and advantages.

Companies can opt for different fault-tolerant, last generation [data centers](https://www.stackscale.com/data-centers/) in Amsterdam and Madrid.