Most workloads run on a normal Cloud Server, a virtual machine that shares a physical host. When you need a whole physical machine to yourself, for performance, licensing, or isolation, create a bare metal server instead. It gives you the entire host with no virtualisation layer and no neighbours.
Create one
- Open Cloud Servers and choose Create Ironic Instance.
- Work through the wizard, much like a normal server:
- Availability Zone: the region to run in.
- Operating System: the image to boot.
- Flavor: the bare metal profile (a whole physical machine, not a virtual size).
- Name: a recognisable name.
- Network and SSH Key, as with any server.
- Create it. Bare metal takes longer to provision than a virtual server because a physical machine is being prepared for you.
After it is up
Manage it like any other server: give it a public address, open ports, and connect over SSH.
Bare metal is priced higher because you reserve a full machine, so use it where the isolation or raw performance genuinely pays off. For redundancy across ordinary servers instead, see Placement Groups.