Bare metal as a platform primitive: Self-service infrastructure beyond the cloud

Managed cloud only goes so far. When GPU workloads fight over shared hardware, per-unit economics break at scale, or provisioning pipelines hide minutes of cold start behind abstractions that promise seconds, teams hit the infrastructure ceiling. This session is for platform engineers who have hit it.

The session walks through the Latitude.sh platform live: deploying bare metal servers via API, bootstrapping with cloud-init, configuring GPU instances, and managing multi-region deployments from a single control plane. It is not a feature showcase, but a concrete look at what self-service provisioning looks like at the hardware layer and how it plugs into an existing IDP toolchain.

Attendees leave with a clearer mental model of when bare metal belongs in a platform architecture and a realistic view of the tradeoffs involved.