What is a Dedicated Server?

Many companies want to secure their resource usage, and therefore opt for a Dedicated Server. While Dedicated Servers offer a range of advantages, there are also some disadvantages to consider. Dedicated Servers are not necessarily the optimal solution for every company and every web project. In our article, we discuss the advantages, disadvantages, and use cases of Dedicated Servers, and explain what to consider when making a selection.

Definition of a Dedicated Server

The term "Dedicated Server" refers to a server that consists of "bare metal", meaning only the hardware without any software. A Dedicated Server is therefore the physical server, initially without an operating system.

When a server is provided in this form, allowing it to be used exclusively ("Single-Tenant Server"), the server automatically becomes a dedicated server. This means that resources do not need to be shared with other users, but can be fully utilised individually.

Another important aspect of a Dedicated Server is that you have full, unrestricted root access to the server with all rights - allowing you to manually adjust the operating system at any time. Additionally, a Dedicated Server always comes with a fixed IP address.

Use Cases for Bare Metal Servers

A dedicated server is useful wherever high server utilisation is required. A Bare Metal Server is simply a specific type of dedicated server, so the same applies to it.

Typical use cases requiring high server performance include:

• Web projects with a lot of content and/or high visitor numbers
• Database servers for very large databases
• Game servers

For slightly smaller projects with moderate usage, the costs and effort for a Bare Metal Server should always be carefully considered. Often, much cheaper and easier-to-manage solutions can also achieve the desired outcome, a dedicated server is not always necessary.

Hypervisors and Virtualisation

A hypervisor is a software layer that can run numerous virtual machines (VMs) on individual partitions on a single hardware server. In this case, the function of a specific hardware configuration (server, desktop, operating system, storage, network) is emulated for each virtual machine by software. This allows numerous individual applications to run side by side on the same Bare Metal Server (dedicated server), strictly separated from each other, with different operating systems and resource capacities. However, the individual VMs can also communicate with each other when needed.

A so-called Type-1 hypervisor is used with a Bare Metal Server. For the use of a Type-1 hypervisor, no operating system needs to be installed on the Bare Metal Server - the hypervisor itself acts as the operating system in this case.

The advantages of using virtualisation through hypervisors are:

• Individual VMs can be allocated resources individually (manually)
• Hardware usage can be optimised, resulting in better performance and energy savings
• Direct hardware access by the hypervisor without interference from other software, resulting in no performance losses
• Easy cloning and replicating of virtual machines becomes possible
• Servers can be centrally consolidated

For hosted systems, hypervisors can also be used for virtualization (Type-2 hypervisors, hosted or embedded hypervisors), but they rely on the existing (mandatory) operating system that manages the hardware alone. In this case, the hypervisor represents an additional layer of software, which can lead to performance degradation, latency, and some other limitations.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Bare Metal Server

As with all server solutions, it is important to consider the advantages and disadvantages of a Bare Metal Server, which simply has as a dedicated server.

Advantages of a Bare Metal Server

The advantages of a Bare Metal Server as a dedicated server lie in the areas of performance, security against unwanted actions from co-users, and the high configurability of the server.

Full Resource Utilisation and High Performance

The most significant advantage of a Bare Metal Server as a dedicated server is certainly the ability to use all the hardware resources alone without sharing resources with other co-users.

The entire performance is always available, and in critical times, one's own performance cannot be affected by high performance requirements of another co-user. This provides a lot of security, and resource utilisation can always be well planned, as only one's own workloads need to be considered.

In addition, on a Bare Metal Server, the desired operating system is installed directly on the server without the need for additional performance-reducing layers. This results in higher overall performance because there are fewer layers that "slow down" performance.

Protection Against Others' Actions

In Shared Hosting, multiple users share a (dynamic) IP address. If co-users violate any rules (search engine guidelines, spamming) - they are then not so nicely called "noisy neighbours" - and you happen to use the same IP address as the respective co-user, this can lead to very negative consequences. In extreme cases, if another user is excluded for violating the spam prohibition, your own site may also be removed from the Google search index. The risk is certainly not to be underestimated, and the consequences are usually devastating.

Another aspect is security: Some companies have very strict regulations regarding data protection and data security - this applies to companies in the financial sector, healthcare sector, and sometimes in retail when handling customer data. In these cases, the use of a Dedicated Server may be necessary to meet the strict compliance and security regulations that a company has imposed on itself or that are already in place.

Complete Configurability

Especially when high demands are placed on the individual configurability of one's own server - including things like virtualisation using a hypervisor - using a Dedicated Server (or another type of dedicated server) is almost unavoidable.

Full root access and full rights allow for very individual hardware configuration based on one's own needs. If specific hardware components are desired or required, this can often only be achieved through the use of a Dedicated Server.

Disadvantages of a Dedicated Server

In addition to all the advantages that a single-tenant server solution and the use of a dedicated server bring, there are of course some disadvantages to consider. This mainly concerns the costs, the inflexibility when it comes to future expansions, and the administrative effort in server management.

Costs

Compared to Shared Hosting, the expected costs for Dedicated Servers are naturally much higher. If a dedicated server is not strictly necessary for the project, the high costs are wasted - highly uneconomical.

Hosting fees are always an important cost factor to consider in all web projects, which can significantly reduce profits in the long run. Therefore, it should be carefully examined whether a dedicated server is actually essential.

Inflexibility in Expansions

With the hardware components chosen at the beginning, you are locked in. Later expansions or replacement of certain components are generally not possible. In such cases, the only option is to order a new server and migrate the entire project to this server - which in practice can be very time-consuming and often associated with problems (no page display, layout errors, cache issues, etc.).

In a Shared Hosting solution, expansion when more resources are needed is usually unproblematic.

The issue can of course be avoided by carefully planning from the outset which combination of components and performance one needs and will need in the future. However, it is never possible to estimate this one hundred percent accurately - and if your own server is a Dedicated Server, you will inevitably encounter problems.

Administrative Effort

Installing the operating system, partitioning, and setting up the required services undoubtedly require work and incur corresponding personnel and time expenditure - with a Shared Hosting solution, a large part of this effort is eliminated, leaving you largely unaffected.

The more you can configure, the more you must configure yourself in the end - this is something to always keep in mind.

Conclusion

Bare Metal Servers, as Dedicated Servers, offer a number of important advantages, especially for performance-intensive applications, high individual configuration needs, or high security requirements. However, their use is not absolutely necessary for every project; for smaller projects with lower workloads, Bare Metal Servers can quickly become uneconomical due to costs and management effort - in such cases, it should always be considered whether a Shared Hosting solution might also be sufficient.

Image credit: Gerd Altmann on Pixabay