Bare Metal Servers - Overview

Still image from the video, Do Business with Bare Metal

What are bare metal servers?

Bare metal servers provide users with sole access to the entire server. Unlike a virtual server with multiple tenants, the pure bare metal server is single tenant and offered without a hypervisor, thereby eliminating the “noisy neighbor” effect and any performance “tax” from the hypervisor. Bare metal servers can be acquired in a preconfigured form or custom-configured to exact specifications.

Bare metal server features

Single tenant

A bare metal server dedicated to customers for complete control, flexibility, and security

Computing power

From single processor 4-core architectures to quad-processor 12-core architectures and up to 3 TB RAM

Local storage range

Up to 36 drives per server, with 800 GB to 1.2 TB SSDs

Choose the best server for you

Bare metal starter

Ideal for smaller workloads.
USD 241/mo.

Intel Xeon E3-1270 v6
4 Cores, 3.80 GHz
16 GB RAM
1 x 1 TB HDD
CentOS
20 TB BW*

Customize and order

Bare metal growth

Ideal for essential production.
USD 444/mo.

Intel Xeon 4210
20 Cores, 2.20 GHz
32 GB RAM
1 x 1 TB HDD
CentOS
20 TB BW*

Customize and order

Bare metal plus

Ideal for heavy workloads.
USD 614/mo.

Intel Xeon 6248
40 Cores, 2.50 GHz
32 GB RAM
1 x 1 TB HDD
CentOS
20 TB BW*

Customize and order

Bare metal server benefits

Customizable RAM, SSD and more

Choose a processor that best meets your performance needs. Upgrade from the base configuration to fine tune the hardware for your workload.

On-demand accessibility

Provision servers in IBM Cloud™ data centers around the world in two to four hours. If you need to be online in minutes or need only limited resources, select an hourly bare metal server.

Cascade Lake promo

Learn more

2nd-Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors

The highly anticipated 2nd-Gen Intel Xeon Scalable microarchitecture can now be ordered and configured in the IBM Cloud catalog.

Available globally

Available in key IBM Cloud Multi-Zone Regional (MZR) data centers across North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region.

50 percent off for 90 days

Use promo code CASCADE50 at checkout.

Ideal use cases for bare metal

High-performance (HPC) and data-intensive applications requiring minimal latency-related delays
Big data analytic applications
Container-based solutions
SAP solutions
GPU-intensive solutions
Dedicated power for gaming
Web hosting
Applications requiring high degrees of security control
Applications that have traditionally run in an on-premises environment

A photo collage representing the various bare metal server use cases, such as gaming, digital media and HPC apps

Bare metal server versions

Monthly bare metal

Order a monthly bare metal server built to specification, and it will be ready for you in two to four hours — with 500 GB per month outbound bandwidth included.

Customize monthly bare metal

Hourly bare metal

Order an hourly bare metal server, and it will be ready for you in 20 – 30 minutes. Public outbound bandwidth is charged per gigabyte.

Customize hourly bare metal

Reserved bare metal

Reserve up to 20 bare metal servers in the data center of your choice and claim them at any time. Requires a 1- or 3-year contract. Ideal for sustained workloads.

Customize reserved bare metal

Our customers

Related products

Accelerate the performance of your servers

GPUs

Servers with cutting-edge GPUs can handle complex compute-intensive workloads — from analytics and graphics to energy exploration and machine learning.

IBM POWER8

IBM POWER8® bare metal servers are based on OpenPOWER, making it easy to make the leap to a Linux-based hosted environment.

SAP-certified infrastructure

Shift SAP environments from on premises to the fully powered IBM Cloud to realize all the advantages of cloud: cost reductions, on-demand flexibility and limitless growth potential.

Server software

Get a comprehensive range of software options from industry leaders, installed using each vendor’s best practices and licensed and billed monthly.

VMware

Seamlessly move VMware workloads from on premises to the cloud with IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.

Get started on bare metal servers in minutes

It's easy to build your bare metal server. Start now and get the raw infrastructure-as-a-service horsepower you need.

Build with bare metal

*20 TB bandwidth included in US, Canada and EU data centers; 5 TB bandwidth included in all other data centers. New prices and offers may not be combined with any other current or future discounts.