This isn't a recent term at all? Back in the 90's people were selling dedicated, unmanaged hardware as "bare metal" servers. Bare metal simply refers to the fac

This isn't a recent term at all? Back in the 90's people were selling dedicated, unmanaged hardware as "bare metal" servers. Bare metal simply refers to the fact that they're handing you an assembled server only -- you need to install an OS and configure it.