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

Good

USD 99/mo.
1U 1x 1270s v3
32 GB DDR4
1x 1TB HDD
500 GB BW

Customize and order

Better

USD 209/mo.
1U 1x 1270s v3
32 GB DDR
1x 1TB HDD
20 TB BW

Customize and order

Best

USD 505/mo.
1U 2x 4110 v1
64 GB DDR4
1x 1TB HDD
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
  • Media, monitoring and streaming applications
  • 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

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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.

Discount available now

For a limited time, enjoy a significant discount on preconfigured bare metal servers.

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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