Your analysis of dedicated servers is somewhat dated. For instance, most higher-end dedicated servers these days come with IPMI. You can use it as a KVM in case

Your analysis of dedicated servers is somewhat dated. For instance, most higher-end dedicated servers these days come with IPMI. You can use it as a KVM in case you muck something up. It has its own IP address (on a different subnet) and browser-based console access. For the servers we rent, IPMI is a requirement. Of course, you can also build and colo your own servers with IPMI--pretty much every brand supports it.