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.
Frequently asked questions
When is a dedicated server actually cheaper than cloud?
Roughly whenever you'd run the equivalent cloud instance at high utilisation 24/7. A 64-core / 256GB bare-metal box is typically 3–5× cheaper than the same specs on AWS or GCP if it's constantly busy. Spiky workloads still favour cloud.
Do I need a dedicated server for a WordPress site?
Almost never. WordPress, even at scale, is happier on managed WordPress hosting or a mid-size VPS with LiteSpeed and Redis. Dedicated makes sense for heavy backend workloads: video encoding, large databases, game servers, ML.
What's the difference between dedicated and VPS hosting?
A VPS is a slice of a physical server shared with other tenants (though isolated). Dedicated is the whole machine — no hypervisor, no noisy neighbours, no shared disk queue. You also pick the exact hardware: NVMe models, GPUs, extra NICs.
Are backups included with dedicated hosting?
Usually not. Most dedicated plans ship as bare hardware; backups are a paid add-on or something you configure yourself with rsync, Restic or Borg to remote storage. Always budget for backups separately.
What happens when the hardware fails?
One machine is one point of failure. Reputable hosts replace failed disks/PSUs within a hardware SLA (often 1–4 hours) but you still need a redundancy plan — a warm standby, database replication, or an object-storage backup you can restore from.
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