The TCO answered the cost question. The Technical Design Report answers everything else.
Before the migration starts, you need to see the new architecture in detail. Which hosts come along. Which workloads move first. What you give up, what stays the same, and what gets better. The Technical Design Report puts every answer on the page.
Your environment, mapped to the target architecture.
The Technical Design Report is built against your hardware inventory, your workload mix, your network design, and your operational constraints. It is not a template. Every section ties back to a specific element in your environment. Your architects validate the design. Your ops team reads the migration sequence. The document stands on its own as the blueprint for the move.
Four outputs every design report delivers
Built from your inventory. Validated against your workload mix. Sized for the move, not for a slide deck.
Migration sequence and timeline
The TDR walks workload by workload through the move. Tier 1 systems first or last, depending on your risk profile. Dependencies traced through application owners. Validation gates with explicit pass criteria. The plan accounts for change windows, business cycles, and the hosts you can take offline first.
Target architecture diagram
A diagrammed view of the new environment. Compute, storage, networking, replication, and management on one platform. Cluster boundaries, tenant boundaries, and the integration points back into your existing identity, monitoring, and backup tooling. Drawn against your data center, not a reference design.
Hardware reuse and new-purchase plan
Every existing host gets evaluated against VergeOS. The report names the hosts that come along, the ones that retire at end of life, and the new gear required to fill any gaps. The bill of materials is specific to your environment and respects your existing investment.
Capability mapping
A three-column comparison. The capabilities you give up. The capabilities that stay the same. The capabilities that improve. No marketing language. No hand waving. Each capability is named, with notes on what changes about how you operate it.
Representative numbers from recent design reports
45 minutes on a working session. Seven days to write the report.
A structured working session with your infrastructure lead walks through your hosts, your storage, your network, your VM mix, your backup chain, and your operational constraints. Each input feeds a specific section of the report.
- Host inventory by make and model, with drive count, RAM, NIC layout, and age
- VM mix by count, OS family, workload class, and known dependencies
- Network design across VLANs, switches, north-south paths, and east-west fabric
- Storage footprint including array, capacity, snapshot retention, and replication targets
- Backup chain including vendor, retention policy, and restore SLA
- Disaster recovery posture including RPO, RTO, and replication geography
The report is delivered as a PDF and an interactive web view, accessible through a unique secure access link. Your architects read it on their own. Your CFO sees the hardware plan. The document stands on its own.
An industry analyst runs the session, not an SDR
The working session is run by George Crump, founder and lead analyst of Storage Switzerland before joining VergeIO. Two decades of independent analyst coverage on enterprise storage, virtualization, and data protection. The same person writing the report joins the call. No discovery shuffle. No handoff between teams.
George brings the analyst lens to the working session. Years of independent coverage on enterprise infrastructure shape how the conversation runs. He asks the hard questions about your environment, pushes back on assumptions that do not hold up, and writes the report against what is actually in front of him. The output is a real-world, actionable plan, not a sales pitch.
What the capability mapping looks like
A regional manufacturer running 14 Dell PowerEdge hosts on VMware. The TDR retained 13 of the 14, added one node for the management cluster, and routed the storage tier through VergeOS native replication. The capability mapping section is reproduced below in summary form. The full report runs three to four pages on this topic alone.
Capabilities retired
- vCenter Server applianceReplaced by the built-in VergeOS management plane. One console covers everything the appliance handled.
- Distributed Virtual SwitchNative VergeOS networking replaces the DVS. The constructs map cleanly. The license line goes away.
- Third-party SDN controllersIntegrated software-defined networking removes the external controller dependency.
- Niche third-party pluginsA small number of vCenter plugins have no equivalent. The TDR names each one and proposes a path.
Capabilities preserved
- Live VM migrationWorkloads move between hosts without downtime. The operator experience matches what your team runs today.
- Snapshot and clone semanticsPoint-in-time snapshots, linked clones, and rapid VM provisioning behave as expected.
- High availability and failoverHA policies survive the migration. Restart behavior on host failure remains automatic.
- Guest OS compatibilityVMs run unmodified. Drivers swap in during the move. The guest sees a familiar virtual platform.
- Storage tieringHot and cold data placement continues. Policies translate into the VergeOS storage layer.
Capabilities upgraded
- Single console for compute, storage, networkOne management plane replaces three separate tools. Daily operations collapse into one workflow.
- Built-in replicationSite-to-site replication is part of the platform. No add-on license. No external orchestrator.
- Ransomware-aware snapshotsImmutable snapshots are native. Recovery from a hostile event happens in minutes, not hours.
- Multi-site managementFederation across sites is built in. One pane of glass spans clusters and regions.
- Tenant isolationNative multi-tenancy means dev, prod, and partner workloads share a platform without sharing a blast radius.
- API-driven workflowsStandard REST endpoints cover every action in the UI. No separate automation product to license.
Capability list above is representative format. Your environment will produce your own list.
The migration starts the day the TDR lands. Every question is already answered.
The four questions architects ask first
No. The TDR is part of how VergeIO does pre-sales. We build it before any decision is made. Plenty of architects run the report, see the design, and use it inside their own organization as a peer-reviewed second opinion on the migration plan.
Accurate to the specific make, model, and configuration of every host you provide on the call. The VergeOS hardware compatibility framework is applied line by line. The report names the hosts that come along and the hosts that retire at the next refresh. The list is something you can take to your vendor.
Send the updates. The TDR is a working document for the first 30 days after delivery. Minor changes to host counts, VM counts, or storage layout get folded into a revised draft at no cost. Major changes restart the working session, which is rare.
Yes. The TDR is yours. Share it with your architecture review board, your security team, your CFO, your auditors. The document is written to survive peer review. The only restriction is that the report does not get redistributed outside your organization.
If the calendar above does not load, the direct link is meetings.hubspot.com/gcrump/technical-design-report.