bare metal
compound.compound. a computer system or server that does not have any extra software or layers between the hardware and the operating system. You use this term when you are talking about running software directly on the physical machine.
compound. a computer system or server in which an operating system is installed directly onto the physical hardware without a hypervisor or virtualization layer. Often used in cloud computing to describe dedicated physical resources as opposed to virtual machines.
The company moved their database to bare metal for better performance.
Running the application on bare metal ensures that no other virtual users compete for the server's processing power.
High-frequency trading platforms often require bare metal environments to eliminate the micro-latencies introduced by virtualization layers and hypervisor management overhead.
Formed from the adjective bare, denoting the absence of a covering, and the noun metal, referring to the physical components of the hardware. The term emerged as a metaphor for the lack of intervening software layers, such as an operating system or hypervisor, between the user's code and the machine.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Often functions as a compound noun or an attributive modifier before another noun, such as 'bare metal server' or 'bare metal environment'.
Last updated July 22, 2026