Bare metal servers deliver the raw performance and predictability that virtual machines often cannot match. Many servers also provide high-bandwidth networking, with options of up to 10 Gbps connectivity. This makes bare metal particularly well-suited for high-performance applications such as databases, data processing pipelines, and large Kubernetes clusters where consistent throughput and low latency matter.
Hetzner make this level of performance accessible at a fraction of the cost typically associated with dedicated infrastructure, and 50% cheaper than cloud VMs. The trade-off is that bare metal servers are harder to operate: provisioning machines, installing the operating system and all the Kubernetes components, and managing lifecycle tasks typically require manual work and additional tooling.
However, Syself Autopilot bridges the gap between bare metal and the cloud by automating the lifecycle management of your Hetzner bare metal machines. Another key differential of Syself Autopilot is the possibility of using bare metal control planes, allowing you to take full benefit of the advantages bare metal servers offer over cloud VMs.
Hetzner Cloud uses dynamic provisioning, which means when Syself Autopilot needs to provision a new node (during a rolling update, version upgrade, or a replacement triggered by health checks), it creates a new VM. If capacity in a region is temporarily exhausted, the operation can stall mid-flight. That can leave upgrades partially completed or recovery processes blocked while the cluster runs in a degraded state, such as operating with only two of three control plane nodes.
Bare metal machines eliminate this entirely. The server is never returned to a public pool, updates roll across existing inventory and self-healing happens on the same host. This class of failure is avoided entirely because the hardware is already allocated and available when lifecycle operations occur.
Virtual machines share CPU scheduling, disk I/O, and network bandwidth at the hypervisor level. While this works well for many workloads, certain components, especially control plane components like etcd, are highly sensitive to disk latency and network consistency. Bare metal provides dedicated NVMe storage and dedicated network bandwidth without interference from other tenants, ensuring predictable performance for latency-sensitive workloads.
Another operational advantage is support coverage. Hetzner Cloud support is limited to business hours, while dedicated server infrastructure includes 24/7 support. In practice, this means hardware incidents occurring overnight or during weekends have a faster resolution path, reducing potential downtime for critical clusters.
Dedicated hardware can also simplify compliance requirements. For frameworks such as ISO 27001 or BSI C5, removing the possibility of noisy-neighbor interference helps reduce the scope of shared-infrastructure risk. This makes audit documentation and evidence gathering more straightforward compared to multi-tenant virtualized environments.
At smaller scales, virtual machines are often convenient. But as clusters grow, the economics shift. Once workloads require larger instances, such as the equivalent of a mid-tier cloud VM, bare metal servers quickly become cost-competitive. With dedicated NVMe storage and no resource contention, bare metal often outperforms equivalently priced virtual machines for control plane workloads and data-intensive applications. As cluster size approaches dozens of nodes or thousands of pods, the combination of predictable performance and lower cost per resource makes bare metal an increasingly attractive foundation for Kubernetes infrastructure.