HOSTING / RESERVE PHYSICAL CAPACITY
Dedicated Servers & Colocation Explained
A dedicated server reserves physical hardware for your use. Colocation instead supplies space, power and connectivity for equipment you own. Neither label automatically includes software management.
What You Are Buying
With a rented bare-metal server, the provider owns the hardware and normally handles hardware replacement under its terms. You run the operating system and workloads unless management is included. With colocation, you own the equipment and must arrange spares, replacement and remote hands. Physical exclusivity is different from high availability: one dedicated machine can still fail.
When You Would Use It
- Run a sustained workload that benefits from predictable physical resources.
- Meet a specific hardware, isolation or licensing requirement after confirming the details.
- Use colocation when you already own appropriate hardware and can support its lifecycle.
What You Still Manage
Ask who handles disk replacement, rebuilds, firmware, out-of-band access and data sanitization. RAID can improve resilience to some disk failures; it does not replace a separate backup. A second power supply does not protect against every shared dependency.
Privacy Considerations
Dedicated hardware reduces sharing with other tenants; it does not by itself exclude data-center staff, management controllers, support tools or backups from the access model. With colocation, confirm physical-access procedures, remote-hands permissions and drive handling. Ask what happens to replaced disks and what evidence of sanitization or destruction is available.
Compare provider access, logs, retention and encryption →
Consumption, Allowances & “Unlimited”
Dedicated plans often specify hardware, transfer, ports, IPs and setup fees. Colocation can add rack space, power commitments, bandwidth, cross-connects and remote-hands time. Unmetered connectivity still has an agreed rate and acceptable-use terms. Some contracts use 95th-percentile bandwidth billing; ask for the sampling interval, direction and calculation.
Read the plan’s resource limits and acceptable-use policy together. Ask what happens at the threshold: an extra charge, reduced speed, rejected requests or suspension. Understand the billing language →
Questions to Ask Before Buying
- What hardware replacement time is promised, and who restores the data?
- What is shared at the network, rack and power layers?
- How are bandwidth, power and remote-hands overages calculated?
- What is the minimum term and equipment or data retrieval procedure?
The takeaway: Dedicated means reserved hardware—not automatic redundancy, management or a complete fixed bill.