Talos Director · Limited Availability
Talos Director, a resource management platform for data centers.
Built on Talos Kubernetes and Talos Hypervisor, Talos Director is an alternative to VMware and similar products: one immutable operating system and one comprehensive management platform for virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, storage and networking.
Live at TalosCon, Oct 15–16 · GA January 2027
What Director does
Everything a virtualization admin expects. Everything a platform team demands.
Talos Director’s automated migration engine converts existing virtual machines and Kubernetes clusters without requiring any application changes. Features proven in production at scale include live migration, high availability, auto scaling, resource scheduling based on performance metrics, micro-segmentation and live traffic analysis.
Control plane
One API for VMs and Kubernetes
Declare VMs, clusters, networks and storage as versioned specs through one API and one console. State reconverges; nothing drifts.
Compute
Live migration, HA and admission control
Move running VMs with no interruption; CPU compatibility profiles show which hosts qualify. HA restarts workloads on host failure.
Scheduling
Automated placement with affinity rules
Per-cluster placement automation balances load across hosts. Affinity and anti-affinity rules pin workloads; overcommit stays visible.
Data protection
Snapshots and scheduled backups
Layered point-in-time snapshots with revert. Scheduled and on-demand backups for VMs and clusters, with restore and health tracking.
Migration
Automated migration engine
Collects VM configuration and segmentation policies, converts and validates, then cuts over in waves. Addresses and services carry over.
Host OS
Immutable, shell-free hosts
Every host runs Talos Linux: no shell, no SSH, no package manager. Signed images and atomic A/B upgrades with rollback.
Security groups
Micro-segmentation with live traffic view
Group VMs by name, tag or address and enforce policy in the data path. Live firewall activity shows allowed and denied flows.
Observability
Observability, fabric and storage
Historical metrics with utilization dashboards and alerts. LACP bonds and VLANs on your fabric; shared storage capacity in one view.
Kubernetes
Cluster lifecycle built in
Clusters with zones, CNI and CIDRs declared up front. Autoscale, rolling upgrades, node health and versions tracked per cluster.
Licensing & availability
Open where it matters. Commercial where it scales.
Open source
Talos Linux & Hypervisor
Talos Linux and Talos Hypervisor remain free and open source under MPL-2.0.
Commercial
Talos Director
Talos Director is licensed commercially, and pricing will be published at general availability in January 2027.
“Yardi has transitioned thousands of virtual machines and hundreds of Kubernetes clusters from VMware to Talos Director. Talos' conversion and migration functionality has been invaluable and allowed us to transition without any platform reengineering. We are on track to completely transition Yardi Cloud to Talos Director.”
Consolidation
Two platforms, consolidated into one.
Most estates run a hypervisor suite for VMs and a separate stack for Kubernetes: two toolchains, two patch cycles, two surfaces to secure and prove at audit. Director runs both on one immutable OS.
With Talos Director
One control plane on an open foundation
- A single management platform that supports the life cycle of virtual machines
- Virtual machines and Kubernetes in a single control plane
- An open source foundation with predictable commercial terms
- An immutable, shell free host with a minimal attack surface
- Declared state that reconverges automatically, so nothing drifts
Migration
Move workload by workload. No cliff edge cutover.
Wave 1 · 40 VMs
Wave 2 · 80 VMs
Wave 3 · remaining
Source estate
Automated conversion
collect config
convert
power on
validate
Director automates
Talos Director
one control plane
VMs + Kubernetes
your own hardware
Destination
01
Assess
Inventory the estate and map hosts, VMs, clusters and dependencies.
02
Stand up
Deploy Talos Hypervisor on reclaimed or new hardware.
03
Move and verify
Migrate in waves. Addresses and services carry over.
04
Consolidate
Retire legacy licenses as waves complete. One control plane remains.
05
Expand
Grow into Kubernetes, edge and GPU workloads. NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
What is automated, and what is handled during conversion. Director automates most of the migration, from configuration collection through conversion and validation. Existing segmentation policies are translated during conversion, so segmentation stays intact as workloads move.
Why now
Why teams are consolidating now. One secure platform for every workload.
Teams are rethinking how they run virtualization. They want one platform for virtual machines and Kubernetes, an immutable host that clears a security review, and commercial terms they can plan around. Talos Director brings those together on an open foundation.
Open foundation.
Talos Linux stays open source under MPL-2.0, backed by Yardi, a 40 year old privately held company invested for the long term.
No re-engineering.
Map configuration of hosts, VMs, Kubernetes, storage and networking, and migrate without re-engineering.
Immutable by design.
No SSH, no shell, no drift on any node Director manages.
See it live
See Talos Director in action.
Then join Limited Availability.
See the live demo at TalosCon 2026 in Amsterdam, or apply to run Talos Director in Limited Availability on your own estate, with full production support and direct engineering onboarding.
Live at TalosCon, Oct 15–16 · GA January 2027