Hetzner now supplies standard builds of its range of self-managed servers within an hour of ordering.

The company’s new automated provisioning process enables it to offer a bare-metal server, installed with a choice of OS, in under 60 minutes.

Hetzner’s range of self-managed servers are built with Intel Xeon processors, multiple enterprise-class disks, RAID, and high amounts of RAM.

To achieve the fast time, Hetzner maintains a stock of pre-built servers.

When an order is placed, its automated provisioning service completes the installation and the customer gains access to the server within an hour.

Linux-based operating systems lend themselves well to automated installation, allowing the deployment of the latest version of the OS.

“A Windows Server installation is more challenging and time-consuming than Linux, as the same rich set of deployment tools aren’t available,” said Hetzner’s Athena Turner.

To overcome this obstacle, Hetzner developed a customisable, network-bootable Windows installer – using a combination of software systems to deploy clean, preconfigured Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 2016 hosts.

This process decreases the turnaround time on new standard build orders by excluding the need for manual intervention.