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Bare Metal access connects you directly to the physical GPU host, with no hypervisor, no managed VM, and no image selection. You launch Bare Metal access from the reservation detail page, attach a registered SSH key, and connect over SSH once the host is ready.

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When to use Bare Metal

  • Your workload is sensitive to virtualization overhead.
  • You need direct control over driver versions or kernel modules.
  • You’re running performance benchmarks or distributed training that benefits from bare physical networking.
  • You want to manage the full software stack yourself.
For most ML training and inference workloads, VM access is the simpler choice. Bare Metal is best when you need full hardware control.

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Prerequisites

Before you can launch or switch to Bare Metal on a reservation:
  • The bid must be promoted to a confirmed reservation, and the reservation must be visible in your portfolio.
  • Checkout and payment for the reservation must be complete.
  • You must have at least one active SSH public key registered on your account. Bare Metal does not use a VM image, so the SSH key is the only credential pushed to the host.
If you have not registered a key yet, see Manage SSH keys for compute access.

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Set up Bare Metal access

1

Open the reservation detail page

From Portfolio (/portfolio), click View on the reservation you want to configure. The detail page opens at /portfolio/[reservationId]. Access mode and state are managed here. The legacy /portfolio/access URL redirects to this page.
2

Select Bare Metal

Pick Bare Metal as the access mode. Bare Metal does not require an image selection; you manage the OS and software stack directly.
3

Add an SSH key and launch

In the SSH Keys section, use Add Key to add or confirm an SSH key on the reservation, then launch. Ornn pushes the active reservation keys to the host as part of the launch step.
4

Connect via SSH

Once the host is ready, the SSH Host and User fields (plus a ready-to-run Quick Connect command) appear in the Connect section of the reservation detail page. Connect directly:
ssh <tenant-username>@<ssh-endpoint>
Bare Metal is direct physical host access. There is no snapshot, no image rollback, and no managed image. You’re responsible for everything on the machine.
VM and Bare Metal can’t run on the same reservation at the same time. Switching modes after launch tears down the existing environment; anything not persisted off the host will be lost.

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Push additional keys

To push another registered key to an already-launched Bare Metal reservation: 
ornn access push-keys <reservation-id> --ssh-key-id <key-id>

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CLI equivalents

The Ornn Compute CLI can queue Bare Metal access with ornn access activate. Use the web reservation detail page for VM image selection and visual access-mode management. 
ornn access show <reservation-id>
ornn access activate <reservation-id> --ssh-key-id <key-id>
ornn access push-keys <reservation-id> --ssh-key-id <key-id>
Get the <key-id> from ornn ssh-keys list, which prints each key’s id, label, and fingerprint. The label is the CLI equivalent of the web Name field. Because ornn access activate queues the launch, poll ornn access show <reservation-id> to know when the host is reachable. It reports each machine’s state along with a Ready: yes line and the Host, Port, and Username once provisioning finishes, plus a ready-to-run SSH: command. SSH in after Ready: yes appears. See the Ornn Compute CLI and Manage SSH keys for details.

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What’s next

access

Access overview

Compare VM and Bare Metal and understand the prerequisites for each.
vm-access

VM access

Use a managed VM with the Ornn base image or an approved custom image.