Locking in performance, network cost, and operational overhead to bare metal cloud for months or years can have significant consequences.
Netrouting is a company that has been running dedicated servers in Europe, North America and in Asia-Pacific since 2007. The company is building and running the AS6206 with a 2.4 Tbps+ backbone, carrier-neutral colocation and bare metal servers. All evaluation criteria for this guide are influenced by the years of experience that Netrouting has accumulated with running dedicated servers.
First, we go through all the factors that matter for serious bare metal providers, and which distinguish them from just rebranded VPSes.
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Additionally, the peering, the DDoS protection, the geographical coverage, the Service Level Agreements, the managed services offered, and the Total Cost of Ownership compared to each cloud service provider.
What Is a Bare Metal Cloud Provider With Bare Metal Servers?
A bare metal cloud provider offers you a rented physical server 100% dedicated to your organization and workloads, with no shared tenancy, no hypervisor overhead, and no competing workloads.
Unlike a virtual server, the physical server is directly accessible to you across global data centers, just as it would be if you had purchased it outright and were running it yourself. The only real difference from owning and managing your own physical servers is that the bare metal cloud server is provisioned on-demand.
What Is a Bare Metal Cloud Provider With Bare Metal Servers?
Bare Metal Cloud, dedicated hardware provisioned to single tenants. No virtualization layer separating workloads from physical CPUs, memory and storage. This results in no noisy neighbors and no variability in performance due to other customers using the Cloud. For more context, see Bare-metal server.
This is very different from Virtual Servers, hosted Virtual Machines, or Shared Hosted Environments, unlike bare metal servers, these environments often have many tenants competing for the same physical resources. Bare Metal Servers deliver every single cycle of processor power to your sole use. In contrast, bare metal infrastructure isolates workloads entirely, preventing performance degradation caused by multiple tenants sharing underlying physical infrastructure. Bare metal servers ensure that your applications never experience slowdowns or resource contention caused by other users on the same physical machine.
How a Bare Metal Cloud Server Differs from VPS and Public Cloud
As mentioned above, a VPS divides a single physical server into separate virtual servers or slices. Meanwhile, public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure use global data centers to divide a single physical server into thousands of virtual servers or slices.
Each instance, VPS or public cloud, includes a hypervisor which adds latency and creates new scenarios and unexpected events. In contrast, vps hosting relies on this virtualization layer to partition resources, which can introduce performance variability depending on the underlying physical server's total load.
Bare metal cloud servers run no additional layers on top of the Operating System, allowing full control of the OS, the kernel and server administration. In addition, a variety of dedicated server configurations available across data centers can be optimized for specific workloads, for example high-frequency trading, GPU inference or latency-sensitive databases.
This level of direct control grants full access to low-level system tuning, enabling engineers to optimize performance for mission-critical applications. Organizations running performance sensitive workloads such as real-time analytics or financial trading platforms require this level of direct hardware access to meet strict latency requirements.
How Quickly Can a Bare Metal Server Be Provisioned?
Provisioning bare metal servers within 60 minutes is common practice. The time it takes to set up a bare metal server at Netrouting is under 60 minutes. The network of 2.4 Tbps+ and 10 data centers in Europe, North America and Asia enable your newly deployed server to go online fast and be globally connected from the very start. In this article we explain how we provisionate bare metal servers under the hood.
Netrouting eliminates setup fees, allowing organizations to deploy infrastructure without upfront capital expenditure or hidden provisioning costs. Organizations benefit from transparent, competitive pricing that scales predictably as infrastructure needs grow across multiple regions. Netrouting's pricing model supports hourly billing, giving teams the flexibility to spin up infrastructure for short-term projects or testing without long-term financial commitment.
How Bare Metal Servers Work in the Cloud
Our Bare Metal Cloud Servers are physical machines, meaning no Hypervisor, no noisy neighbors and no sharing of any kind of resources. That’s the promise of bare metal technology.
What Is Bare Metal as a Cloud Service?
Bare metal in cloud computing means renting dedicated servers (so called single-tenant) where you as customer have direct access to the hardware (e.g. CPU cores, RAM, storage) without any virtualization in between. The physical servers (including the data center/infrastructure) are owned by the cloud provider and are maintained by them. Everything above that is in your control. The extent of maintenance and infrastructure management the provider depends on the service level agreement negotiated at contract signing.
In contrast to virtualized environments where a hypervisor partitions a single physical server into multiple virtual servers, bare metal provisioning eliminates overhead and unpredictable latency of virtualized environments.
Bare Metal Dedicated Servers vs. Virtualized Environments
| Dimension | Bare Metal | Virtualized Cloud | Shared Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tenancy | Single-tenant | Multi-tenant | Multi-tenant |
| CPU overhead | None | 5-15% | High / variable |
| Network latency | <1 ms intra-DC | 1-5 ms typical | Unpredictable |
| Software stack control | Full | Partial | Minimal |
| Uptime SLA | 99.9%+ | 99.9% | Varies |
Bare Metal Instances: How Provisioning Works
You receive Bare Metal Instances with the chosen Operating System installed via IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface), you get Full IPMI access on all instances.
Netrouting offers Dedicated Physical Servers that can be provisioned in under 60 minutes. Once provisioned and brought online in data centers, the Dedicated Server is fully owned by the customer and consists of the complete server stack, the kernel, the drivers, the runtime and the application layer.
Dedicated Servers at this level of the infrastructure are suited for databases, game servers and AI Inference workloads. Each of these workloads has a corresponding real-world use case where the bare metal infrastructure of Netrouting makes the biggest difference. Organizations requiring high performance for real-time processing or compute-intensive tasks find that bare metal eliminates the latency introduced by virtualization layers.
Bare Metal vs. VPS vs. Public Cloud: Side-by-Side Comparison
| Provider Type | Performance | Support | Uptime SLA | Network | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Netrouting | Dedicated hardware resources, Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC, up to 2 TB RAM, unmetered 10 Gbps | 24/7 NOC, 1-hour ticket guarantee | 99.9% standard SLA | 2.4 Tbps+ backbone, AS6206, AMS-IX, DE-CIX, FL-IX peering; 10 cities across EU, NA, APAC | Bare metal cloud workloads needing dedicated resources, global reach, and predictable cost |
| Hyperscaler bare metal cloud | Standardized hardware resources; limited custom configs | Tiered; premium support costs extra | 99.9%-99.99% depending on tier | Massive global footprint; high egress costs | Teams already deep in a single cloud ecosystem |
| Boutique bare metal cloud solution | Dedicated hardware, limited SKUs; no custom configs | Business hours only at entry tiers | 99.9% typical | Single-region or limited private cloud connectivity | Single-region deployments with simple requirements |
| Private cloud / on-prem colocation | Full control of hardware resources; high capex | Self-managed or contract-based | Varies; operator-defined | Carrier-dependent; no built-in IX peering | Regulated workloads requiring physical ownership |
The strongest offering of bare metal cloud solutions for the majority of buyers can be found at Netrouting. Netrouting’s bare metal cloud is running on dedicated hardware (no noisy neighbors) and dedicated resources (no shared physical infrastructure) within 60 minutes and across 10 locations worldwide. This deployment speed combined with presence across global locations ensures enterprises can scale infrastructure rapidly while maintaining consistent performance and low-latency connectivity.
Clients deploying latency-sensitive applications across multiple regions rely on this infrastructure to achieve low latency connectivity between distributed workloads and end users. Netrouting combines this technical capability with competitive pricing that makes enterprise-grade bare metal accessible to organizations of all sizes. Netrouting's flexible pricing model supports hourly billing, allowing organizations to scale infrastructure costs in alignment with actual usage patterns without long-term commitments.
The next question would be which workloads would benefit from this combination of dedicated hardware, global network reach and 24/7 support.
Common Use Cases for Bare Metal Cloud Infrastructure
Many performance-sensitive workloads running on private networks benefit from dedicated servers precisely because they are negatively impacted by noisy neighbors, hypervisor overhead, or unpredictable I/O. Here's where dedicated hardware (bare metal) makes the most sense.
Workloads That Demand Anti DDoS Protection Included
Workloads such as high performance computing, data pipelines and analytics face the limits of physical systems when run on virtualized hosts. To deliver consistent performance under sustained load, Bare Metal workloads are running directly on the CPU, RAM and NVMe storage without a hypervisor in between.
Machine learning training and AI inference are both hardware bound processes. Instead of the overhead of cloud infrastructure, you can run your GPU servers with NVIDIA A10, A40, or A100 cards. For EU-regulated workloads, dedicated hosting also offers physical data isolation as opposed to multi-tenant environments.
Since both are provided by dedicated hardware (as opposed to shared VMs), there is no scheduling jitter.
How Is Bare Metal Different from a VPS or Virtual Machine?
A VPS is carved out from a single physical server by a Hypervisor. A Bare Metal Server on the other hand is a physical server dedicated to a single tenant completely and with no Hypervisor, neighbors or shared cloud storage pool in between fighting for IOPS.
In practical terms, a VPS can easily see 10-30% CPU overhead due to virtualization, while bare metal has zero such overhead. For latency-sensitive or high-compute-workload applications using object storage across data centers, this overhead directly impacts optimal performance and your ability to meet service level agreements (or not).
All Our Servers Ship with Baseline DDoS Protection
All servers include always-on L3/L4 DDoS protection by default.
Netrouting can set up bare metal servers in less than 60 minutes in ten locations across the globe: Stockholm, Amsterdam, The Hague, Frankfurt, Bucharest, Rotterdam, Miami, New York, Hong Kong and Singapore. It includes unmetered 10 Gbps and dedicated hosting in a single rack unit or more.
Once you understand what bare metal can do for you, you also need to figure out how to compare the different providers offering it.
What to Look for in a Bare Metal Cloud Provider
Bare metal cloud providers can be a high-stakes decision.
Dedicated Servers Infrastructure, Network, and Location
Start by looking at a provider’s global data center footprint. A true global network consists of colocated hardware close to your users and upstreams.
Network quality is just as important as your physical location.
- Low-latency connectivity provided by our Tier 1 upstreams and dense peering to Internet Exchanges (IX).
- Unmetered high-speed ports, not throttled burstable links.
- Private networks between your servers at no extra cost.
- BYOIP and full BGP support for routing control.
Our network has 2.4 Tbps+ of capacity with network resources engineered to maintain consistent sub-40% port utilization.
Is Bare Metal Faster Than Public Cloud?
Yes, consistently. Bare metal technology eliminates the hypervisor layer entirely. Therefore there is no noisy-neighbor contention, no shared CPU steal, and no memory ballooning from adjacent tenants.
For latency-sensitive workloads, such as high-frequency databases, real-time gaming, and GPU inference, the difference is measurable. It results in lower p99 latency and more predictable throughput compared to corresponding virtual servers running on shared infrastructure.
Dedicated Servers With Anti DDoS Protection and Support
We provision bare metal in under 60 minutes, which is far faster than is acceptable for most incident responses or scaling out events.
As a basic feature and not an additional service, anti-DDoS protection has to be provided automatically across bare metal infrastructure for all layers starting from layer 3/4, covering virtual machines and beyond.
Review SLA uptime guarantees, custom hardware options for dedicated servers with unusual configurations, and whether the managed services include OS patching and monitoring.
All Our Dedicated Servers: Netrouting's Bare Metal Cloud Across 10 Data Centers
Netrouting is a bare metal cloud provider operating dedicated servers across 10 global data centers, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Bucharest, Miami, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore. All our servers run on Dell and Supermicro hardware across private networks, built on Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC platforms, with up to 2 TB RAM, up to 24 drives, and hardware RAID. Bare metal dedicated servers provision in under 60 minutes.
- Bare metal cloud across three regions: Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific (all locations in our global data center footprint). Run your dedicated hardware close to your users and your upstreams.
- Anti-DDoS protection included. Our always-on L3/L4 DDoS protection is included with every bare metal instance, no add-on required.
- Free private networks. Our customers get to use free private networks for free for up to 40 Gbps of interconnect between their servers. Each server is in its own private network, and there are no shared services or other tenants on the networks between servers.
- BGP and BYOIP support. We offer Full BGP routing control and bring-your-own-IP on our AS6206 backbone. This is ideal for hybrid infrastructure and performance-sensitive workloads.
- Bare Metal GPU Servers for AI/ML. We provide the best bare metal GPU servers for running machine learning, inference and high performance computing workloads. The servers are hosted in a number of locations around the world.
- Infrastructure, certified to ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and SOC 2 for regulated industries as well as for the development teams that work in them.
Before you compare the different configurations or even ask about your own custom hardware in the bare metal cloud, for now it’s enough to get an impression of the costs in comparison with the Hyperscalers.
Bare Metal Cloud vs. Hyperscaler Compute: TCO and Performance
Many hyperscalers now bundle managed services into the price for what you use and a premium for everything else. Bare metal removes the hypervisor tax and egress surprise fees to provide lower TCO for core compute workloads.
Assess Your True Dedicated Servers Cost Baseline
- Audit your current cloud spend. Review your last 3 invoices and break out compute spend from egress spend as well as review your support spend and spend on idle reserved instances. Non-compute overhead typically can range from 30% to 40% of total spend.
- Identify CPU-bound, memory-intensive and I/O-intensive workloads and map them to suitable resource profiles. Because of the “virtualization tax” on a per-core basis, workloads running on bare metal will be more cost effective than when running on virtualized systems.
- Your network quality matters. Hyperscalers charge egress fees that compound quickly. Running bare metal in a carrier-neutral cloud, like Netrouting’s cloud on the AS6206 network, ensures that the costs of bandwidth are predictable.
What Workloads Are Best Suited for Dedicated Servers?
Latency-sensitive and resource-intensive workloads running across global data centers will benefit the most from isolated physical servers, including game servers, video streaming services, AI/ML inference workloads and high-throughput databases.
- High-throughput databases. No noisy-neighbour contention. Full RAM and NVMe throughput available to a single tenant.
- Hosted private cloud deployments. Users of hosted private cloud services typically require a consistent level of IOPS. Bare metal delivers IOPS without the variance of shared resources.
- Hybrid infrastructure workloads. Bare metal workloads can be connected to cloud-based compute services via a free private network for a true hybrid infrastructure offering without cross-connect charges.
Note: Avoid bare metal for workloads requiring rapid horizontal autoscaling in seconds, pair it with cloud environment virtual instances for burst capacity instead.
Validate and Right-Size Your Dedicated Servers
- Custom configurations requested. Our standard service offers you a selection of our Standard Service Offered Kernels (SKUs) but as always we have to remind you that no two workloads are ever exactly the same. Netrouting’s engineers have many years of experience and will happily create a fully bespoke hardware config to your exacting requirements. To request an enterprise configuration, please contact our sales team.
- Run a parallel benchmark to compare p95 latency and throughput to bare metal over 72 hours and total cost of ownership.
The TCO case for bare metal dedicated servers is very strong. The performance case for them is equally as strong and is based on several fundamental advantages that bare metal dedicated servers have over virtualized environments.
Why Choose Netrouting
When you need bare metal servers with no noisy neighbors, predictable performance, and a network built for throughput, Netrouting is the fit. We operate dedicated servers and bare metal cloud infrastructure across ten cities, giving development teams and enterprise buyers genuine global reach without the complexity of managing multiple vendors.
- Bare metal, no virtualization tax. Every bare metal dedicated server ships on Dell or Supermicro hardware, Intel Xeon or AMD EPYC, with full IPMI access, dedicated compute resources, and zero shared tenants. Performance-sensitive workloads get the full physical server, not a slice of one.
- 2.4 Tbps+ carrier-neutral network. Our AS6206 backbone peers at AMS-IX, DE-CIX, FL-IX, and NetNod. Low-latency connectivity across Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Miami, New York, Hong Kong, and Singapore means bare metal cloud servers reach your users fast, wherever they are.
- Always-on DDoS protection included. Anti-DDoS protection at L3/L4 ships with every service, no add-on, no extra configuration. Advanced application-layer mitigation is available for high-risk workloads.
- Private networks up to 40 Gbps, free. Bare metal instances and cloud servers connect over a free private network. No public internet exposure for internal traffic. Enhanced security by default.
- GPU servers for AI/ML and big data. NVIDIA A10, A40, and A100 options support machine learning inference and high-performance computing with EU data sovereignty where it matters.
- Managed services and custom configurations. From managed Proxmox VE to custom hardware options and bare metal dedicated configurations at scale, our team handles server administration so yours doesn't have to.
Our service level agreement covers 99.9% uptime with same-business-day hardware replacement. If you're evaluating a bare metal cloud provider for a performance-sensitive or regulated workload, speak with our sales team, we'll compare options and put together a configuration that fits.
Bare metal cloud gives you dedicated hardware with cloud-style provisioning, no noisy neighbours, no hypervisor overhead, and predictable performance under sustained workloads. Network quality, deployment speed, and support responsiveness separate capable operators from the rest.
When evaluating providers, prioritise those operating their own data centers with a private backbone, dense IX peering, and always-on DDoS protection included by default, not bolted on as an upsell.
Netrouting delivers bare metal as a cloud service across ten locations in Europe, North America, and Asia, provisioned in under 60 minutes, backed by a 2.4 Tbps+ network on AS6206, and supported 24/7 with a one-hour ticket guarantee. Explore Netrouting's dedicated server options and find the configuration that fits your workload.
