Solution Architecture & Technical Consulting
Translating mission and business requirements into practical, defensible technical designs — and staying involved through implementation, not just the diagram.
Solution Architecture & Technical Consulting
Independent engineering judgment, applied to real systems.
Onyx Haven Labs is the brand. Chad Thurman is the consultant. The lab is the capability — a hands-on environment for testing, integrating, and proving out infrastructure before it ever reaches production.
I help organizations design, evaluate, and stand up the infrastructure their mission actually depends on — from enterprise systems to deployable, edge, and tactical environments — and I test it myself before I recommend it.
Capabilities
Consulting areas grounded in direct experience, not a services menu.
Enterprise & Edge Infrastructure
Architecture that has to work in a data center and at the edge: compute, storage, and connectivity designed for the environment it will actually run in.
Networking & Communications
Communications and network design informed by two decades of Army Signal experience — from planning through fielding.
Tactical & Deployable Technology
Systems built to move: ruggedized, portable, and field-deployable configurations for environments that don't have the luxury of a fixed data center.
TAK-Related Environments & Integration
Practical experience with TAK ecosystems and the surrounding infrastructure needed to stand up, integrate, and support them.
Virtualization, Compute & Storage
Hypervisor platforms, storage architecture, and compute sizing — designed, deployed, and validated end to end.
Technology Evaluation & Proof-of-Concept
Structured evaluation of new products and approaches: build it, test it against real requirements, and report what actually holds up.
Vendor & Product Integration
Independent technical assessment of vendor claims and product fit — evaluated against your requirements, not a sales deck.
AI-Enabled Workflows & Automation
Applying AI-assisted tooling to real operational and engineering workflows — automation that removes toil rather than adding complexity.
Local & Private AI, Operational Tooling
Self-hosted and locally-run AI tooling for environments where data locality and control matter as much as capability.
The Technical Lab
Onyx Haven Labs maintains a working technical lab — a real, hands-on environment for testing infrastructure, integrating products, and validating designs before they're proposed to a client or fielded in the field.
That means recommendations here aren't theoretical. Virtualization platforms, networking configurations, storage designs, and automation workflows get built and exercised in the lab first. If something doesn't hold up under test, it doesn't make it into a proposal.
- Prototyping and proof-of-concept builds ahead of client deployment
- Independent evaluation of new hardware, platforms, and vendor products
- Ongoing hands-on work with virtualization, networking, and automation tooling
- A practical testbed for AI-enabled and locally-run tooling
About Chad
Onyx Haven Labs is the independent consulting and technical lab of Chad Thurman, a retired Army Signal warrant officer and current Solutions Architect. With more than two decades of experience supporting Army communications, enterprise infrastructure, and information systems, Chad brings a practical, tested approach to solution architecture, systems integration, technology evaluation, and emerging capabilities.
Onyx Haven Labs exists to keep that approach hands-on: a real environment for testing, prototyping, integration work, and technical evaluation — turning requirements into solutions that have already been proven out, not just proposed.
21+
Years of Army service
CW
Retired Army Signal Warrant Officer
SA
Solutions Architect, present day
Get in Touch
Have an architecture question, an evaluation you'd like a second opinion on, or a project worth discussing? Reach out directly.
hello@onyxhavenlabs.com