AWS Alternative in Europe for Bare Metal
Amazon Web Services is one of the most capable cloud platforms in the world. But for organizations running bare metal workloads in Europe, AWS may not always be the right fit. This article provides a fair, honest comparison of AWS and DCXV - covering where each platform excels, where they differ on cost and compliance, and what a migration looks like in practice.
AWS overview
AWS was founded in 2006 and today operates the most extensive public cloud infrastructure globally. For bare metal, AWS offers EC2 Bare Metal instances (the i3.metal, m5.metal, and similar families) which give you direct hardware access within the AWS ecosystem.
AWS strengths include:
- Ecosystem depth: hundreds of managed services, databases, ML tools, and integrations available natively
- Global reach: over 30 regions and 90+ availability zones worldwide
- Managed services: RDS, ElastiCache, SQS, Lambda, and hundreds of others eliminate operational overhead for common infrastructure components
- Enterprise compliance certifications: SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and many more
- Developer tooling: mature CLI, SDK, Terraform providers, and console
AWS is the right choice for organizations building complex multi-service architectures, teams that want managed services to reduce operational complexity, or workloads that require deep integrations across the AWS service catalog.
Where AWS excels
AWS bare metal instances are ideal when your workload needs direct hardware access but you also rely on AWS-native services. If your application uses RDS Aurora, Elasticache, or Lambda functions alongside your bare metal compute, staying within AWS simplifies networking, IAM, and billing.
AWS also excels for globally distributed workloads. If you need bare metal compute in 10 regions simultaneously with consistent tooling and billing, AWS provides this with minimal coordination overhead.
For regulated industries that have already completed AWS compliance assessments, staying on AWS avoids redoing certifications on a new platform.
Where DCXV excels
DCXV is built for organizations where the raw economics of bare metal matter and where EU data sovereignty is a real requirement, not a checkbox.
Cost: DCXV bare metal starts from EUR 15/month for VPS and provides dedicated hardware at prices 3-5x lower than equivalent AWS bare metal instances for comparable CPU, RAM, and storage specifications. There are no egress fees - you pay for bandwidth at flat rates, not per-GB transfer costs that accumulate unpredictably at AWS scale.
EU sovereignty: DCXV operates exclusively from EU data centers: Prague (CZ), Vilnius (LT), and Covilha (PT). All infrastructure is EU-owned and operated under EU legal jurisdiction. For organizations subject to GDPR enforcement scrutiny or national data residency requirements, this is a meaningful distinction from AWS, which remains a US-headquartered company.
Support: DCXV provides direct access to engineers with approximately 10-minute response times around the clock. AWS support at equivalent response speeds requires enterprise support contracts at significant additional cost.
Uptime: DCXV maintains 99.982% uptime on Tier III certified infrastructure. Our SLA is backed by infrastructure redundancy, not contractual credits alone.
Provisioning: Cloud instances provision in under 10 minutes. Dedicated server deployment completes within 24 hours.
Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | AWS Bare Metal | DCXV Dedicated |
|---|---|---|
| Price | High, variable with egress fees | Lower, flat-rate bandwidth |
| Location | Multiple regions, US-headquartered | EU-only: Prague, Vilnius, Covilha |
| SLA uptime | 99.9% per service | 99.982% Tier III |
| Support | Tiered, enterprise plan required for fast response | 24/7 direct engineers, ~10min response |
| EU compliance | Possible, but US jurisdiction applies | Full EU sovereignty, GDPR-native |
Migration from AWS to DCXV
Migrating bare metal workloads from AWS to DCXV is straightforward for most applications. The typical migration path involves: provisioning equivalent DCXV hardware, deploying your application stack using existing configuration management tools (Ansible, Terraform, etc.), validating performance and functionality in parallel with your AWS environment, and cutting over DNS or load balancer routing once validation is complete.
DCXV engineers are available throughout the migration process to assist with network configuration, BGP setup if you are bringing your own IP space, and any infrastructure-level questions. Most migrations complete within a few days of the initial provisioning request.
If your workload relies heavily on AWS-native managed services (RDS, Lambda, etc.), migration requires replacing those services with self-managed equivalents or third-party alternatives. This is the most significant migration consideration and should be scoped carefully before committing.
For organizations running bare metal workloads with standard Linux or Windows stacks and self-managed databases, migration is low-risk and the cost savings begin immediately. Start at https://dcxv.com/data-center#dedi or contact sales@dcxv.com.
