Topgolf saved over $11.3M after leaving VMware

arstechnica.com

72 points·canucker2016··6 comments

> the sports entertainment company moved 12,000 virtual machines (VMs)

So, for each top golf location we have something like 120 VMs? That sounds suspiciously like exactly one per bay.

After a point it must be cheaper to bring in a AAA engineer and do this with 10-50x fewer machines. Poking VMs with the management stick doesn't fundamentally solve this IT scaling problem.

Given their proximity to chunks steel being flung around by newbies, I suspect the VM-per-bay solution is part of a thin client deployment that makes the customer-facing hardware as cheap and efficient to replace as possible.

Nice inference, it sounds like a naturally grown solution. Make an app that controls one golf location or terminal. Grow for X years. One VM + App per terminal. Now there's 100+ VMs per site, multiply by site count, plus admin. No terminal-level refactor that would reduce costs and admin.

Always enjoy reading a post-Broadcom migration story, congrats to Topgolf for making the move.

Unfortunately it’s a drop in the bucket compared to how much they’re losing on the actual business.

Are there numbers regarding Broadcom losses since implementing their "fuck you" policies? I would love to see them, because they are wringing an entire industry dry for a few drops of short term gains.

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