As a B2B company, IT agency, or cloud provider grows, physical infrastructure becomes central to scale and cost strategy. Should you keep renting compute through a Dedicated Server (Bare Metal) service, or invest in your own hardware (CAPEX) and install it in a datacenter through Colocation (Housing)?
This comparison covers one of the most important architecture decisions for IT leaders.
What Is a Dedicated Server (Bare Metal)?
With a dedicated server, you rent a physical machine already assembled, powered, and connected by a provider. Infrawire offers high-performance dedicated servers powered by Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC on AS210699.
✅ Dedicated Advantages
- OPEX model (no upfront hardware investment): no need to spend large cash on enterprise CPUs, RAM, and NVMe SSDs.
- Hardware warranty (RMA): if a disk or RAM stick fails, the provider handles replacement.
- Fast deployment: server provisioning can be done in minutes.
❌ Dedicated Limits
Over long periods (3-5 years) with many servers, total rental cost can exceed direct hardware ownership. Hardware choice is also limited to provider catalog options.
What Is Datacenter Colocation (Housing)?
Housing/colocation means you buy your own hardware, assemble it, and install (or ship) it into datacenter racks (10U, quarter rack, half rack, full rack).
You then pay for:
- Physical rack space (U)
- Power + cooling (HVAC)
- Network traffic / peering (BGP) / IP transit
✅ Colocation Advantages
- Full hardware control: build custom setups unavailable in standard rental catalogs.
- Long-term ROI: after hardware amortization, monthly cost often drops significantly.
- Ownership independence: the hardware is yours.
❌ Colocation Drawbacks
You own operations and incidents. If a component fails at night, your team must intervene onsite or pay remote hands. Hardware also depreciates on your books.
Financial Equation: When to Switch?
General CTO rule:
- Under 5 to 10 standard bare-metal servers, stay on dedicated rental.
- When hosting bills explode or architecture needs massive local storage, colocation usually becomes profitable by year 2.
Infrawire Hosts You at Equinix PA5
We provide B2B customers with premium housing and colocation at Equinix PA5, one of France's key Internet hubs.
From a single 1U server with your own BGP announcement to a locked half-rack for your IS, Infrawire combines a 100 Gbps core network, operator-grade Anti-DDoS, and Equinix-tier security.