# Bare metal

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See FAQ for differences between [Bare Metal and Virtual Machines](/docs/additional-information/faqs/differences-of-bare-metal-and-virtual-machines.md)
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## Reserving bare metal hosts

Bare metal reservations are processed through our [sales team](https://www.denvrdata.com/contact-our-team) and include sales engineering support to ensure a successful setup.

The tenant will need to provide requirements for:

* primary SSH public key for remote access 
* O/S image version or private image
* setup of local NVMe as block devices or as file systems (ZFS, RAID level)

Denvr can optionally pre-setup:

* local NVMe block devices as a RAID filesystem 
* GPU and InfiniBand drivers (NVIDIA driver, CUDA toolkit, NvLink fabric manager, Mellanox OFED, NCCL)
* password-less SSH access between hosts using tenant private network VPC
* NFS access to network storage platforms (1PB+ capacity)

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Denvr provides CPU-only virtual machine instances for head-node/cluster management software.  These will be located in separate chassis and power zones. 
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## Accessing bare metal hosts

#### SSH Access

All hosts can be accessed through their Public IP and SSH key, as well as private VPC networking.

Inter-node access uses private networking over 100G ethernet.  SSH keys should be configured for password-less authentication for automation purposes.

#### Browser-based Console Access

> **Note:** This feature is in beta. Contact your administrator to enable console access.

All hosts support browser-based console access through a secure web proxy, providing direct terminal access to bare metal systems without requiring SSH client software or inbound internet access (public or VPC).

**To access the console:**

1. Navigate to **Bare Metal** from the left navigation bar
2. Find your server in the list and click the **three-dot menu (⋮)** on the right
3. Select **Open Console** from the dropdown menu
4. The browser-based terminal will connect automatically

**Console features:**

* Full terminal access to OS via IPMI
* Copy/paste support for commands and output

## Completing bare metal reservations

All host disks will be securely wiped after a reservation period ends.  This includes both system disks as well as local NVMe data disks.

Please be responsible to backup all data on bare metal hosts to storage platforms, or offsite.  

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Host data will be unrecoverable after your reservation completes.
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