What is a Dedicated Server?

A dedicated server is a physical server that is exclusively assigned to a single organization. Hosting providers provision an entire server, with all its resources, including processor, RAM, and storage, to a designated customer. Consequently, you get an isolated physical server environment that you can configure and manage as required. A dedicated server is useful for environments requiring full control of systems, or compliance settings where complete data and workload isolation is required and data residency is critical.

Organizations run applications and websites, through to full operating environments on servers. Servers can be hosted on site and managed by your team, accessed in a hosting provider's data center, or run by a cloud provider in the cloud. Depending on the hosting model, a server might accommodate multiple customers simultaneously in shared hosting, where multiple virtual servers run on one physical machine. To ensure exclusivity, providers offer dedicated server hosting, with a one-customer to one-physical machine service offering. Below, we share the benefits of choosing a dedicated server.

High performance

Dedicated servers provide access to the entire server's resources. If you choose a high performance dedicated server, you have all the resources of the server available for your computing workloads, for consistent performance. The dedicated server doesn't share physical hardware resources like CPU processing power, RAM, or storage with other customers.

More configuration control

You can configure your own dedicated server to a greater level of detail compared to other types of hosting models. For example, you can configure server ports, resource allocation configurations, and other low-level operating system settings. You can also monitor the server for a complete view of your physical server load, network activity, and memory usage. This way, you can optimize the dedicated server for your own unique use cases.

Enhanced security

With fewer entry points, your data is more isolated in a dedicated server. You also have complete control of your server configurations to implement any security strategies you require. With this additional security, you can meet very strict compliance regulations required for certain industries, such as finance and healthcare. You can also change your security configurations to meet new regulations and rules as and when they become compulsory.

With dedicated hosting, you rent a dedicated server from the hosting provider, where the server is located in a remote data center. You can allocate the entire physical machine and all of its accompanying resources. This means the server's CPU, GPU, RAM, storage, and bandwidth are all available to your organization. Most dedicated hosting solutions guarantee a certain amount of uptime and offer support in case of server hardware failure or other technical issues.

Once rented, IT teams can virtualize and run multiple instances (or virtual machines) on their dedicated server. We share the steps below.

1. You obtain root access or administrative access to the server.
2. Then, you install an operating system, virtualization software if required, applications, manage user accounts, adjust server settings, and perform administrative tasks.
3. Depending on use cases, you can use your existing per-socket, per-virtual-machine (VM), or per-core software licenses.

Usually, dedicated hosting is unmanaged, where you must perform all of the administration and configuration remotely. In fully managed hosting services, your dedicated server provider will offer additional managed services such as software updates, security patches, technical support, and server monitoring. In an unmanaged dedicated hosting service, you are responsible for all server-related tasks, including operating system updates, security patches, and backups.

Dedicated servers offer robust performance, security, and customization for a variety of use cases. You can use your dedicated server for any workload, from running applications, to storage and machine learning.

Next, we give some use cases for dedicated servers.

Compliance

You may consider using a dedicated server for storing or processing sensitive data regulated by stringent data protection laws. Some rules and regulations require hardware-isolated data storage and processing for sensitive information. For instance, you can use a dedicated server to secure financial data and healthcare businesses can use dedicated servers for protection of their medical records.

Licensed software

Some software applications require physical hardware elements to run. In these cases, you will only be able to install and configure the software on a dedicated server, and not on a virtual machine. In other cases, software licenses are per physical machine. In this case, you can partition the dedicated server to serve the software across multiple virtual machines, for greater cost efficiency.

Gaming

A dedicated gaming server is a popular choice for hosting multiplayer online games. They offer low latency, high performance, and the ability to handle many simultaneous players.

Web hosting provision

Many hosting companies use dedicated servers to host multiple client websites. They use virtualization software to separate different clients and manage resources effectively. If you are planning on running a web hosting service, a dedicated server will help you set up your business.

Bare metal servers are dedicated servers that are hosted and managed by a cloud provider. The terms dedicated servers and bare metal servers are often used interchangeably. Dedicated servers might run a service provider's virtualization software, such as the case of Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts. Meanwhile, bare metal servers are cloud servers that offer a direct hardware service with complete control and complete access without any pre-loaded hypervisor or cloud software.

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts are AWS-managed dedicated server hardware with Amazon EC2 capacity. Amazon EC2 instances are virtualized cloud servers that run on top of physical servers. With Dedicated Hosts, you can use your existing per-socket or per-core software licenses. This includes Windows Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and SUSE Linux Enterprise. Unlike dedicated servers, which require technical knowledge to set up, AWS takes care of these server management tasks on your behalf, so you can seamlessly launch Amazon EC2 instances.

Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances are virtual machines that run in a virtual private cloud (VPC) or hardware that's dedicated to a single customer. With Dedicated Instances, AWS automatically handles placement and capacity, providing the same elasticity as standard EC2 instances while maintaining physical hardware isolation. Like dedicated hosts, the provider automates server setup on your behalf. Dedicated Instances may share hardware with other instances from the same AWS account that are not Dedicated Instances. A dedicated instance cannot support per-machine software licensing due to its architecture.

With Amazon Web Services (AWS), IT teams can host applications, data, AI workloads, and more within isolated and exclusive access environments. Organizations use these AWS services to support their dedicated server requirements in private, public, and hybrid cloud environments.

• Amazon EC2 Bare Metal Instances are useful for workloads that require direct access to the server's processor and memory.
• Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts are a physical server with EC2 instance capacity completely dedicated to your use.
• Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances are EC2 instances that only run on hardware dedicated to your organization.
• AWS License Manager assists in specifying your licensing terms for governing license usage.
• AWS Outposts runs dedicated on-premise servers with access to AWS services.

Get started with dedicated servers on AWS by creating a free account today.