How Saratoga Casino Left VMware, Cisco UCS, and Pure Storage Behind
Scott Bartgis inherited a stack another company picked. He replaced it with VergeOS on servers he chose himself, removed roughly $50,000 a year in array maintenance, and held the performance of the all-flash array he retired. Hear his account, then watch the same journey run live: migrate a VMware workload, tier the storage behind it, and pull a server out of the environment with the applications still serving.
Your Presenters
Aaron Richman
Field Evangelist, VergeIO
Scott Bartgis
Corporate Director of IT, Saratoga Casino Holdings
Ben Marquis
Director of Storage & Software Solutions, CXTEC
Dave Vincent
Technical Solutions Strategist, VergeIO
Forty-Five Minutes, One Complete Migration
Saratoga Casino Holdings runs four properties on one corporate IT team, and player tracking sets the bar for uptime. This session pairs Scott’s account of that project with a live demonstration that follows the same customer journey: start small, migrate an existing workload, tier the storage behind it, then refresh hardware with the business still running.
Start Small, on Hardware You Own
VergeOS installs on standard x86 servers, including the hosts in your racks today. Scott proved the platform on a single micro PC with 16 GB of RAM before he committed to anything larger.
Move a VMware Workload Live
Watch an existing VMware workload move into VergeOS with minimal downtime. Organizations transition on their own schedule this way, one workload at a time, rather than betting the environment on a single all-at-once cutover.
Flexible Storage Tiering
Combine different storage technologies into performance and capacity tiers. Important workloads run on high-performance media, less-demanding data sits on economical media, and one platform manages both.
Remove a Server, Keep Serving
Move workloads off a selected server, place it in maintenance, and remove it from the environment. Applications stay online throughout, which shows they carry no permanent tie to a specific server, array, or proprietary hardware platform.
Proof of Concept to Production
The same demonstration runs in a compact evaluation environment and in a larger multi-node lab. Evaluate VergeOS on hardware you already own, then expand into production infrastructure on the same platform.
Ask the Customer Directly
Scott takes questions on hardware choice, performance against the Pure array, and the migration order he recommends to anyone starting the same project. The engineers running the demonstration answer alongside him. Bring your renewal quote and your current inventory list.
Built for Teams Holding a Renewal Quote
This session speaks to infrastructure architects, IT directors, and systems engineers who own a VMware renewal decision and an aging server fleet at the same time. Attend if a partner or an OEM picked your current stack and the cost of that choice now sits on your budget.
Small IT teams supporting multiple sites will recognize the shape of the problem. Saratoga supports four properties with one corporate team, and every decision in this project traces back to that constraint.
Engineers who want proof rather than slides get it here. The production combines presenter, hardware, and VergeOS interface views on screen together, so you watch a physical action and its effect on the environment at the same moment.
Software That Runs on the Servers You Pick
VergeOS is an integrated private cloud operating system that combines virtualization, storage, and networking in a single code base. It installs on standard x86 servers, including the hosts already in your racks, and licenses per host rather than per core. Dense servers cost less to run under that model than they do under current VMware terms.
That efficiency reduces node count, which frees hardware for trade-in and shortens the list of parts you keep under support. Saratoga kept the same database replicated on both platforms during the migration and compared them side by side. Scott’s verdict on the difference: “If you blindfolded me, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Hardware Freedom With a Lifetime Warranty
CXTEC has refurbished enterprise hardware since 1995 in ISO 9001 certified facilities. Equal2New systems are engineer built and burned in before they ship, and a fully configured server carries a lifetime warranty on the chassis and every component, memory included. SSDs carry a one-year term for finite write life.
RapidCare adds 8×5 next-business-day or 24×7 four-hour parts replacement at about a third of comparable OEM support cost. CXTEC also buys back retired servers, VxRail nodes, and arrays, so the gear you remove returns value toward the gear you add. Saratoga already trusted the program for network switches, which made the server decision straightforward.
Save Your Seat
Thursday, August 13, 2026 · 1:00 PM ET · 45 minutes · On-demand recording available to every registrant