Who uses what

Five personas, five different reasons to care about this design. Each cares about a different failure mode — host join reliability, cost, licensing, or a sign-off risk question — so each should read a different slice of this site.

Personas

Persona	Cares about
Grid admin	EGO/SOAM health, host join reliability, port matrix correctness, workload throughput
Platform / SRE	One control plane for containers and VMs, GitOps reconciliation, cluster capacity and cost
Windows engineer	Golden-image build reliability, sysprep/join automation, WinRM debug access to guests
FSI architect	Auditable supportability chain, licensing posture, multi-cloud burst story, risk sign-off
Procurement	Advanced Edition BYOL timing (eval expires 2026-12-31), Windows licensing model (LI vs BYOL), vendor support contracts

Persona

Cares about

Grid admin

EGO/SOAM health, host join reliability, port matrix correctness, workload throughput

Platform / SRE

One control plane for containers and VMs, GitOps reconciliation, cluster capacity and cost

Windows engineer

Golden-image build reliability, sysprep/join automation, WinRM debug access to guests

FSI architect

Auditable supportability chain, licensing posture, multi-cloud burst story, risk sign-off

Procurement

Advanced Edition BYOL timing (eval expires 2026-12-31), Windows licensing model (LI vs BYOL), vendor support contracts

Where each persona should start

Persona Read these pages, in order

Persona	Read these pages, in order
Grid admin	Network model — port matrix, keepalives, dynamic-host wait time Symphony management — EGO/SOAM on the RHEL hosts Windows compute pool — host join, `VirtualMachinePool` Traps — what has actually broken host joins on this build, and the fixes
Platform / SRE	Architecture — full topology GitOps — app-of-apps layout, reconciliation model OpenShift Virtualization — HyperConverged, bare-metal workers Business outcomes — cluster capacity and cost numbers
Windows engineer	Windows golden image — autounattend, sysprep, MSI staging, firstboot join ADR 0012: WinRM in image — debug access rationale ADR 0003: Windows Server 2019 — why 2019, not 2022, for now Traps — the compounding join root causes found via the WinRM debug channel
FSI architect	The problem — the licensing volatility and ISV-support trap this design exits The solution — the thesis, the supportability spine, the alternatives verdict SWOT & sign-off — the argument in one page, dated against the live build ADR 0010: stretched grid fallback — the multi-cloud burst trade-off at scale
Procurement	ADR 0006: eval then BYOL — eval entitlement terms, expiry 2026-12-31, the BYOL transition Business outcomes — cost floor and burst economics SWOT & sign-off — risk posture in one page

Grid admin

Network model — port matrix, keepalives, dynamic-host wait time
Symphony management — EGO/SOAM on the RHEL hosts
Windows compute pool — host join, VirtualMachinePool
Traps — what has actually broken host joins on this build, and the fixes

Platform / SRE

Architecture — full topology
GitOps — app-of-apps layout, reconciliation model
OpenShift Virtualization — HyperConverged, bare-metal workers
Business outcomes — cluster capacity and cost numbers

Windows engineer

Windows golden image — autounattend, sysprep, MSI staging, firstboot join
ADR 0012: WinRM in image — debug access rationale
ADR 0003: Windows Server 2019 — why 2019, not 2022, for now
Traps — the compounding join root causes found via the WinRM debug channel

FSI architect

The problem — the licensing volatility and ISV-support trap this design exits
The solution — the thesis, the supportability spine, the alternatives verdict
SWOT & sign-off — the argument in one page, dated against the live build
ADR 0010: stretched grid fallback — the multi-cloud burst trade-off at scale

Procurement

ADR 0006: eval then BYOL — eval entitlement terms, expiry 2026-12-31, the BYOL transition
Business outcomes — cost floor and burst economics
SWOT & sign-off — risk posture in one page

Continue to UC1: submit a workload, or jump straight to Architecture for the full topology.