Single-Tenant Performance with Cloud-Grade Operations — Secure, Efficient, and Proven
Dedicated servers (single-tenant bare metal) deliver consistent performance, full hardware control, and predictable cost for workloads that don’t fit shared virtualization.
SolveForce designs, deploys, and operates dedicated servers in colocation & data centers (and at the edge) with cloud-grade tooling: API/automation, Zero-Trust access, observability & evidence, backup/DR, and compliance overlays—so the binder matches the build every day.
Related foundations
• DC & Interconnect → /networks-and-data-centers • /colocation • Optical/DCI → /wavelength • Cloud on-ramps → /direct-connect
• Private/Virtual DC → /private-cloud • /virtual-data-centers
• Security → /cybersecurity • Access → /ztna • Privilege → /pam • Keys/Secrets → /key-management • /secrets-management
• Data & Storage → /san • DR/Backups → /backup-immutability • /draas
• Evidence & Ops → /siem-soar • Spend → /finops
🎯 Outcomes We Optimize
- Deterministic performance — no noisy neighbors; tuned CPU, memory, storage, and NIC queues for low p95/p99 latency.
- Operational calm — image pipelines, policy-as-code, and drift watchers keep fleets consistent.
- Zero-Trust by default — ZTNA to BMC/OS consoles, PAM JIT for root, keys in HSM/KMS, secrets from vault.
- Evidence on demand — build sheets, burn-in logs, change diffs, and DR artifacts feed /siem-soar.
- Predictable cost — reserved terms, committed bandwidth, and capacity/energy planning with /finops.
🧭 Reference Architecture (DC/Colo/Edge + Hybrid)
Fabric & Interconnect
- EVPN/VXLAN leaf/spine; 10/25/40/100/200/400G uplinks; MACsec on uplinks as required.
- Private on-ramps (DX/ER/Interconnect) and wavelength/ROADM metro rings for DCI. → /networks-and-data-centers • /wavelength • /direct-connect
Server Management Plane
- BMC (iDRAC/iLO/IPMI) isolated on a private mgmt VRF, reachable via ZTNA bastions; PAM JIT elevation; audit logs to SIEM. → /ztna • /pam
Provisioning & Images
- PXE/iPXE → cloud-init/Ansible/Terraform/Packer; golden images with SBOM & signatures; CIS/STIG baselines; agent stack pre-baked. → /infrastructure-as-code
Data & Storage
- Local NVMe/SSD/HDD (RAID/ZFS) for speed; SAN/NVMe-oF for shared low-latency; object for backups/archives with Object-Lock (WORM). → /san • /backup-immutability
Security & Compliance
- Secure boot/TPM 2.0; OS & BMC firmware lifecycle; disk encryption (LUKS/BitLocker) with KMS/HSM; WAF/Bot for admin portals. → /key-management • /waf
Observability & Evidence
- Telemetry (SMART, IPMI, temps, power, fan), logs/metrics/traces + config diffs → /siem-soar; runbook automations (reboot, fence, rotate keys, quarantine).
📦 What We Deliver & Operate (MSP for Bare Metal)
1) Hardware design & supply — CPU/RAM/storage/NIC/GPU BOM; rail/PDUs; rack elevations; power/thermal (kVA/BTU) plans.
2) Network & IP — VLAN/VRF, LACP/LAG, IPv4/IPv6 subnets, ACLs, optional BGP (IP Transit/Anycast).
3) Provisioning pipeline — PXE/iPXE, Packer-built images, cloud-init/Ansible, enrollment into CM/monitoring; SBOM & signatures recorded.
4) OS/Hypervisor catalog — Linux (Ubuntu/RHEL/Alma), Windows Server, ESXi/Proxmox, container hosts (Kubernetes nodes), HCI stacks.
5) Storage options — Local NVMe (RAID-1/10), SATA SSD/HDD tiers, ZFS, Ceph, or external SAN/NVMe-oF; snapshot/replica policy.
6) Security posture — ZTNA to BMC & SSH/RDP, PAM JIT, disk encryption tied to KMS, vault secrets, WAF/Bot on portals, email auth (SPF/DKIM/DMARC/BIMI).
7) SRE/Ops — patch rings, firmware lifecycle, drift detection, capacity boards, on-call & vendor escalation.
8) Continuity — image rehydrate, immutable backups, spare pools, RMA SLA, DR runbooks & drills.
9) Compliance — SOC2/ISO/NIST/HIPAA/PCI/FedRAMP overlays with export packs. → /grc
🔢 Hardware Profiles (pick your fit)
| Profile | CPU (examples) | Memory | Storage (local) | Network | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute-Optimized | 2× Intel Xeon Scalable / AMD EPYC high-clock | 128–512 GB | 2× NVMe (OS), NVMe scratch | 2×10/25G | API gateways, game servers, high-freq apps |
| Memory-Optimized | 2× EPYC / Xeon (many DIMMs) | 512 GB–2 TB+ | 2× NVMe OS + SSDs | 2×25/40/100G | In-memory DB, caches, analytics |
| Storage-Optimized | 1–2× CPU | 128–512 GB | 8–24× HDD + SSD cache / all-NVMe | 2×25/40/100G | Backup/media movers, object/file nodes |
| GPU | 1–2× CPU + 1–8× GPUs (A/MI/L-series) | 256 GB–1 TB | NVMe scratch (4–16 TB) | 2×25/100/200G | AI/ML, render/encode, CV |
| High-Frequency | 1–2× high-GHz CPUs (few cores) | 64–256 GB | NVMe | 2×10/25G | Trading, low-latency microservices |
Addons: TPM 2.0, SmartNIC/DPU, HSM, QSFP28/56/112 optics; Out-of-Band (OOB) on separate PDU/UPS.
🧰 Storage & RAID Matrix (local)
| Layout | Redundancy | Perf | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAID-1 (NVMe) | Good | Read↑ / Write≈ | OS/boot, small DBs |
| RAID-10 (NVMe) | Very good | High | Low latency DB/VMs |
| ZFS (mirror/raidz) | Strong | Good–High | Snapshots, checksums, scrubs |
| JBOD + Ceph | Node-level | Clustered | Scale-out object/block |
| SAN/NVMe-oF | External | Very high | Shared low-latency; see /san |
🌐 Network Options
- Uplinks: 2× (or 4×) 10/25/40/100/200/400G with LACP; separate mgmt and data VLANs/VRFs.
- IP: dual-stack IPv4/IPv6; optional BGP to DC edge; Anycast IPs for global ingress.
- Security: ACLs/microseg at ToR/leaf; MACsec on uplinks; DDoS posture at Internet edges; WAF/Bot for portals/APIs.
🔐 Security That Sticks (bare-metal baseline)
- Identity-first: SSO/MFA; PAM JIT for root/iDRAC/iLO; short-lived certs/keys; session recording.
- BMC isolation: mgmt VRF + ZTNA; disable legacy IPMI cipher suites; rotate BMC creds on turnover.
- Custody: KMS/HSM CMKs; disk encryption (LUKS/BitLocker) bound to KMS; vault for app secrets.
- Supply chain: SBOM for images; signed firmware where available; track CVEs & apply windows.
- Boundary: WAF/Bot, API schemas & signing; email auth (DMARC→p=reject) for ops notifications.
📐 SLO Guardrails (Dedicated Servers you can measure)
| Domain | KPI / SLO | Target (Recommended) |
|---|---|---|
| Provisioning | Bare-metal ready (PXE→running) | ≤ 60–180 min (stock) / as quoted for custom |
| Hardware Replacement | Failed disk/NIC/PSU swap | ≤ 2–4 h onsite SLA |
| Network | Leaf↔leaf latency | ≤ 10–50 µs |
| Packet loss | Sustained | < 0.1% DC fabric |
| Storage | p95 read/write latency | ≤ 0.5–1.5 ms / ≤ 1–3 ms (workload-dep.) |
| Security | ZTNA admin attach | ≤ 1–3 s |
| Backups | Immutability coverage (Tier-1) | = 100% |
| DR | RTO / RPO (Tier-1) | ≤ 5–60 min / ≤ 0–15 min |
| Evidence | Logs/artifacts → SIEM | ≤ 60–120 s |
| Change | Unapproved prod changes | = 0 |
Breaches auto-open a case and trigger SOAR actions (fence node, fail path, roll back image, re-key, isolate interface), with artifacts attached. → /siem-soar
🧪 Acceptance Tests & Artifacts (we keep the receipts)
- Burn-in: CPU (stress/ng), memory (memtest), storage (fio/SMART), NIC (iperf/loss/jitter).
- Firmware: BMC/BIOS versions, microcode, secure boot state; rollback packages archived.
- Provisioning: PXE logs, SBOM & image signature proofs, CIS/STIG checks.
- Network: LACP state, VLAN/VRF reachability, latency/jitter; BGP peering (if used).
- Storage: RAID/ZFS state; fio read/write/4k/seq; NVMe-oF path/MTU; snapshot/restore proof (screenshots + checksums).
- Security: ZTNA admits, PAM session recordings, KMS/vault rotations, WAF/Bot events, DMARC/TLS-RPT headers.
- DR: re-hydrate from image; failover/failback timings; clean-point catalog updates.
Artifacts stream to /siem-soar and bundle into QBR/audit packs.
🔁 Use-Case Patterns
- High-perf DB & analytics — CPU or memory-optimized nodes, NVMe-oF or RAID-10 NVMe, 25/100G, pinned NUMA.
- AI/ML & render — multi-GPU with NVLink/PCIe 4/5, NVMe scratch, 100/200G, object store for datasets.
- Latency-sensitive apps — high-clock CPUs, tuned kernel/IRQ, DPDK/AF_XDP options, Anycast ingress.
- Media & CDN edge — storage-optimized with 25/100G, cache/SSD tiers, Anycast routing.
- Security / Network appliances — DPDK + SR-IOV SmartNIC, TPM2 + secure boot, high PPS.
- Private cloud nodes — HCI or K8s worker pools on bare metal; GitOps and admission policies.
💸 Commercials & FinOps
- Models: monthly/annual reserved, node packs, or capacity pools; committed bandwidth (95th or flat).
- Dashboards: $/node, $/vCPU, $/GB, $/GPU-hr, power/utilization; savings from consolidation & energy.
- TEM/Colo: cross-connects, cross-haul, and space/power tracked; dispute credits with evidence. → /expense-management • /finops
🧱 Design Notes & Best Practices
- Two is one: dual PSUs, dual NICs, dual fabrics; spare inventory.
- Keep BMC dark: mgmt VRF, ZTNA only; rotate creds; audit sessions.
- Image discipline: SBOM + signatures; refresh cadence; immutable base.
- Queue/IRQ tuning: pin interrupts; adjust rx/tx rings; jumbo MTU where needed.
- Storage math: measure p50/p95/p99; size queue depth; align sector sizes; scrub schedules.
- DR rehearsals: quarterly image re-hydrate and failover with screenshots & checksums.
- Document: rack elevations, cable IDs, serials, WWNs, VLAN/VRF maps—publish in Knowledge Hub.
📝 Dedicated Servers Intake (copy-paste & fill)
- Sites/colo (addresses, power/cooling, racks/PDUs), on-ramp POPs, diversity needs
- Use-cases & SLOs (DB/AI/render/edge/virtualization)
- Hardware (CPU family, cores, RAM, GPUs, NICs, TPM/HSM)
- Storage (NVMe/SSD/HDD, RAID/ZFS, SAN/NVMe-oF, capacity/IOPS)
- Network (VLAN/VRF, LACP, 10/25/100G, IPv4/IPv6, BGP/Anycast?)
- OS/Hypervisor (Linux/Windows/ESXi/Proxmox/K8s), image baseline & agents
- Security (SSO/MFA, ZTNA/PAM, KMS/vault, disk encryption, WAF/Bot, email auth)
- Observability (logs/metrics/traces, SMART/IPMI, SIEM destination)
- Continuity (backup targets, Object-Lock, DR tiers, RTO/RPO)
- Compliance (SOC2/ISO/NIST/HIPAA/PCI/FedRAMP), artifact retention
- Operations (managed vs co-managed, change windows, escalation matrix)
- Budget & timeline, success metrics (p95/99 latency, throughput, uptime)
We’ll return a design-to-operate plan with BOMs, network/storage designs, SLO-mapped pricing, compliance overlays, and an evidence plan for audits and QBRs.
Or jump straight to /customized-quotes.
📞 Get Dedicated Servers That Perform, Protect, and Prove It
- Call: (888) 765-8301
- Email: contact@solveforce.com
From high-freq compute and GPU farms to NVMe-oF storage and edge nodes, we’ll deliver dedicated servers that are fast, secure, cost-smart—and auditable.