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Is it possible to host/colocate your own rack servers/equipment in Google's/Amazon's/Microsoft's data centers?

Google has an option for hosted private HSM but explicitly notes that this is not a general server housing solution

This offering is limited to FIPS 140-2 Level 3 (or better) certified HSMs, and is not a generalized hosting or colocation service.

Another option is to house your servers near (topographically) the cloud regions or with the cloud's partner and connect with Direct Connect or Interconnect.

But is it possible to hand your server/appliance off to Google/Amazon/Micrososft and have them host it with only logical control left for the client?

Damn Terminal
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No, this is not possible. There are some instances where GCP/AWS/Azure will give access to some bare-metal services, they will not allow you to place your own equipment in their datacenters. Most won't even let you tour their facilities.

Bare Metal Offerings:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/baremetal-infrastructure/concepts-baremetal-infrastructure-overview

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/02/introducing-five-new-amazon-ec2-bare-metal-instances/

https://cloud.google.com/bare-metal

Ken W - Zero Networks
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  • I concur with this answer for Google Cloud. Even Google employees require authorization to visit a data center. – John Hanley Mar 11 '22 at 22:19
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Like others have said, running your own hardware IN a cloud provider's datacenter is not possible. The bare metal or dedicated host options are as close as you are going to get.

AWS Outposts does allow you to run some of their services from your own hardware. And you could locate that hardware in a colocated datacenter to get similar power, environment and security controls.

If you have an appliance that needs to be hosted, see if they already support one of the cloud providers as a virtual appliance. A lot are now natively supporting cloud by providing images, for example AWS's Marketplace. For example I can run the same firewall virtual appliance on-prem (multiple supported hypervisors), in AWS as well as Azure and GCP I believe.

Tim P
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No. You can't send your own hardware, but you can have dedicated hardware for your VMs.

surfingonthenet
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AWS Outposts does allow you to run some of their services from your own >hardware. And you could locate that hardware in a colocated datacenter to get >similar power, environment and security controls.

This is absolutely incorrect. AWS Outposts is a fully managed (leased) rack of AWS services that you can deploy in your own datacenter, but you can not run any AWS services on your own hardware.

Paul
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