What it does
Scaleway Elastic Metal supplies single-tenant physical servers without a hypervisor, while connecting them to Scaleway's cloud ecosystem. Buyers choose a server range and zone, install an operating system from the console, and manage the machine themselves. Private Networks can link Elastic Metal to Scaleway Instances, databases, and load balancers; flexible IPs, API tooling, a CLI, SDKs, and Terraform support are also documented. It suits workloads that need dedicated hardware but still benefit from cloud-style provisioning and adjacent services.
Choose hardware first, then install your operating system
Elastic Metal is bare metal rather than a virtual machine: the server's physical resources are dedicated to the customer, and there is no hypervisor layer to manage. The product page separates models into ranges for different profiles, including general production use, high workloads, local storage, and GPU compute. Start by comparing the server specifications and the zones where each model is offered. From the management console, select a server and launch an operating-system installation; Scaleway says fast-delivery systems can be provided within minutes, while the OS installation itself can take up to an hour.
Once provisioned, the administrator is responsible for the operating system and application stack. This is a better fit for a database, build worker, or other workload with a reason to reserve physical resources than for a small site that only needs a managed application runtime. Private Networks can place a bare-metal host alongside Scaleway Instances and services such as databases or load balancers. The documentation also gives a quickstart for creating, connecting to, and deleting a server, while the product page lists API, CLI, SDK, and Terraform options for repeatable provisioning.
Billing can be hourly or monthly. The monthly option has a one-time commitment fee, so compare its terms with expected server lifetime rather than assuming that monthly is a no-commitment discount. Backups are not described as instance snapshots: the page points to exporting data and configuration to Object Storage or designing application-level redundancy. No server was provisioned for this listing.
Strengths
- Dedicated physical resources are available without a hypervisor, with several hardware ranges for different workload profiles.
- Hourly billing and cloud-network integrations offer more flexibility than a traditional monthly-only dedicated server.
- The quickstart covers server creation, connection, and deletion, and the product page documents API, CLI, SDK, and Terraform tooling.
Watch out for
- Customers manage the installed operating system and application stack rather than receiving a managed application runtime.
- The monthly billing option carries a one-time commitment fee, and OS installation can take up to an hour after delivery.
- The product page describes backup as an application or Object Storage task rather than an instance-style snapshot.
Best for
- Production workloads that need dedicated physical compute with nearby cloud services.
- Teams automating bare-metal provisioning with Scaleway's API, CLI, or Terraform provider.
- Applications that need private connectivity between dedicated servers and Scaleway cloud resources.
Sources
- Elastic Metal - bare metal servers in the cloud | Scaleway (Oct 25, 2026)
- Elastic Metal Documentation | Scaleway Documentation (Oct 25, 2026)