Topgolf Dumps VMware After 400% Price Hike, Migrates 12K VMs to VergeOS, Saves $11.3M

Background: Broadcom's VMware Price Surge Forces Migration

Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, U.S. golf entertainment chain Topgolf faced a projected 400% cost increase for its VMware estate. The company had relied on vSphere, ESXi, and VxRail (a Dell/VMware hyperconverged system) across 100+ venues, offices, labs, and data centers. Broadcom discontinued perpetual licenses and consolidated products into fewer, larger, higher-priced bundles. Gartner predicts 55% of enterprises will launch proof-of-concept projects to move off the Broadcom-owned virtualization vendor by 2029.

Topgolf's global infrastructure manager, Scott Forehand, noted the prior relationship was close — Topgolf staff served on VMware customer councils and were featured in case studies. However, the strategic shift created unacceptable uncertainty, prompting a full migration of all on-premises workloads. Forehand expects VMware to be completely decommissioned by the second week of December.

Migration Execution: Selecting and Deploying VergeOS

After evaluation, Topgolf chose VergeOS from VergeIO. Two key technical factors drove the decision:

Multi-tenancy management : VMware's architecture could not partition clusters into independent tenants per business need; managing many vCenter instances was cumbersome. VergeOS allows tenant segmentation by time zone, simplifying upgrades and maintenance, and supports nested lab environments within a single cluster, reducing lab hardware.

API-first design with native infrastructure-as-code support : VergeIO assisted with Terraform and Ansible adapter development, enabling existing automation pipelines to be reused directly.

The migration took roughly six months. Topgolf replaced 650 VxRail nodes with 400 Dell PowerEdge servers . According to VergeIO's case study, a six-node VxRail cluster with 35 TB of storage moved to a three-node VergeOS cluster with 5 TB of storage.

Forehand reported hardware spend dropped 87% and software costs fell 77% . Topgolf also secured a five-year enterprise license agreement (ELA), whereas VMware's reported ELA offering was only three years.

On the application side, Topgolf and VergeIO co-developed custom integrations, such as running the proprietary Toptracer ball-tracking system (machine-learning-based) on VergeIO clusters.

Challenges: Coordinating Concurrent Projects and Ecosystem Gaps

The biggest challenge was coordinating multiple simultaneous projects during the server-stack replacement . Forehand explained:

Previously with VxRail, all game systems ran on backend servers. With VergeIO we simplified the game stack, pushing all compute to edge game panels at the hitting bays. This meant synchronizing several workstreams: replacing every game panel, re-cabling podiums, swapping the entire server stack, and moving to a brand-new Kubernetes game architecture. The team used the overall upgrade window to also retire other technical debt.

A secondary hurdle was third-party software compatibility with the new virtualization platform, specifically infrastructure monitoring tools Rubrik and LogicMonitor. Forehand acknowledged that VMware's decades-long ecosystem maturity is a gap newer vendors generally share.

Forehand emphasized the real difficulty was not technical but communicating capability gaps to management and setting realistic expectations.

Outcomes and Lessons

12,000 VMs migrated in six months.

Infrastructure cost savings > $11.3 million (≈ ¥75.6 million).

Hardware reduction: 650 → 400 nodes (87% less hardware spend).

Software cost reduction: 77%.

Five-year ELA vs. VMware's three-year offer.

Multi-tenancy and API-first architecture enabled operational simplification and automation continuity.

Migration window leveraged to modernize game-stack architecture (edge compute + Kubernetes) and retire technical debt.

The case illustrates how abrupt vendor pricing and licensing changes can trigger large-scale infrastructure replatforming, and how multi-tenancy, automation readiness, and vendor partnership can mitigate migration risk even when ecosystem maturity lags.