Dedicated hosting explained
A dedicated server is a physical machine — CPU, RAM, disks, NIC — that nobody else touches. In an age of cloud and VPS, that still matters for a specific set of workloads. Here's when.
Why dedicated still exists
- • No noisy neighbours, ever. No hypervisor overhead, no stolen CPU, no shared disk queue.
- • Predictable performance. The same benchmark run twice a week apart gives you the same number.
- • Cheaper past a certain size. A 64-core / 256GB bare-metal box is typically 3–5× cheaper than the equivalent cloud instance running 24/7.
- • Compliance. Some contracts require physical isolation of your data on hardware you rent exclusively.
- • Hardware you can pick. Specific NVMe models, GPUs, extra NICs, more RAM channels — cloud vendors don't sell that à la carte.
Cloud / large VPS vs dedicated
| Trait | Cloud / large VPS | Dedicated |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning | Minutes | Hours to a day |
| Cost at 24/7 load | Higher | Lower |
| Elastic scale | Yes, in seconds | No — order more hardware |
| Contract | Pay-as-you-go | Monthly to annual |
| Failure model | Machine dies → auto-reschedule | Machine dies → your on-call |
Good fits for dedicated
- Steady-state services running 24/7 at high utilisation (large databases, video encoding, game servers).
- GPU workloads where cloud GPU prices are punishing.
- Regulated data with contractual isolation requirements.
Checklist before you sign
- 1. Setup fee: waived or one month of rent?
- 2. Contract length and what happens if you cancel early.
- 3. Bandwidth: cap in TB/month, port speed, and overage price per TB.
- 4. IPMI / KVM-over-IP: can you access the console when networking dies?
- 5. Hardware SLA: how many hours to replace a failed disk or PSU?
- 6. Backups: dedicated boxes rarely include them — plan and budget separately.
- 7. DDoS protection: included, opt-in, or extra?
The failure model is on you
One machine means one point of failure. Plan for it: two boxes with replication, or a warm standby somewhere else. Otherwise the price savings evaporate the first time a motherboard dies.