Dedicated Hosts
- What it is
- An entire physical server allocated to your account alone.
- You get visibility into and control over sockets, cores, and host ID.
- Why it exists
- Bring Your Own License — server-bound licenses (Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle) are counted per physical core/socket. See Bring Your Own License.
- Strict compliance or regulatory rules that require dedicated physical hardware.
- Cost
- The most expensive tenancy model. Billed per host, not per instance.
- Not to be confused with
- Dedicated Instances — also isolated hardware, but you get no visibility into the physical host, and instances may move to a different host after stop/start. That breaks socket-bound licensing.
- The one-line difference
- Dedicated Host = you see and keep the physical server (needed for BYOL).
- Dedicated Instance = isolation only, no host visibility.