Bare Metal or Cloud Servers?

Buildservers
15 hours ago
2 min read

Visual comparison of bare metal and cloud servers, illustrating performance and infrastructure differences for CI/CD workloads

What's Best for CI/CD Workloads?

When building fast, reliable CI/CD pipelines, one of the first decisions developers and DevOps teams face is whether to run workloads on cloud servers or bare metal servers. Both offer benefits, but understanding the tradeoffs is key to maximizing performance and cost-efficiency.

Cloud Servers: Flexible but Abstracted

Cloud services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer instant scalability, managed services, and a pay-as-you-go model. They're ideal for:

Bursty workloads
Multi-region deployments
Teams needing managed infrastructure

But there are drawbacks:

Hidden fees (egress costs, premium storage, API limits)
Shared hardware introduces unpredictable performance
Limited control over the underlying environment

Bare Metal Servers: Raw Performance and Full Control

Bare metal servers offer dedicated physical hardware without virtualization layers. For CI/CD jobs, this often means:

Predictable and consistent performance
No resource contention with noisy neighbors
Better price-to-performance ratios at scale

When to Choose Bare Metal:

You need full root access and custom OS setups
CI pipelines rely on high disk I/O or CPU
You're running Docker builds or VM-in-VM test environments

BuildServers.xyz: Best of Both Worlds for CI/CD

At BuildServers.xyz, we provide dedicated bare metal servers in Europe, optimized specifically for CI/CD workloads.

Why our customers choose us:

GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps integration: Ready-to-use self-hosted runners
Fixed pricing: No surprises at the end of the month
Instant setup: Pre-provisioned servers with Docker
Locations in Frankfurt, Warsaw, and more
Security-first infrastructure: Encrypted disks, isolated tenants, and zero tracking

We handle the server so you can handle your code.

Summary: Bare Metal Wins for DevOps Performance

While cloud servers offer convenience, they can't match the performance, control, and transparency of bare metal for CI/CD pipelines. If your business depends on fast build times, reproducibility, and compliance, bare metal servers from BuildServers.xyz are the clear winner.