VergeOS for Venues, Remote Offices and Edge
One platform from the core data center to every venue, branch and edge site, managed from one place
Summary
Distributed organizations run IT in places that look nothing like a data center. A venue has to keep ticketing, point of sale and game systems running for live crowds. A branch office has no IT staff on site. An edge site has to keep working when the WAN goes down. VergeOS gives every location the same software, from the core data center to a two-node remote site, with high availability, data protection and central management built in. Topgolf runs more than 100 venues this way, and SkiBig3 runs its entire operation on two nodes.
One platform for every location, so IT stops running a different stack at each one.
Four Location Types, One Platform
Most distributed organizations manage four kinds of locations: large public venues, remote and branch offices, edge computing sites and core data centers. Each has its own demands. Venues need nonstop operation for crowds. Branch offices need systems that run without local experts. Edge sites need to work on their own and still report to headquarters. The core data center needs to tie it all together.
The usual answer is a different platform for each, with separate hardware appliances, separate licenses and separate consoles. That multiplies cost and complexity at exactly the sites with the fewest people to manage it.
VergeOS takes a different approach. The same software runs at every location. It combines virtualization with VergeHV, storage with VergeFS, networking with VergeFabric, and data protection with ioClone, ioReplicate and ioGuardian in one operating system. A small remote site and a large core data center run the same code and the same operating model, and IT manages all of them from one interface.
Always-On IT for Live Crowds
Stadiums, entertainment complexes, casinos and retail sites depend on IT for point of sale, ticketing, security, streaming and customer engagement. Downtime during an event means lost revenue and frustrated guests. Venue infrastructure has to support live upgrades without interrupting operations, recover quickly from failures and deliver high-performance storage for real-time applications, with central monitoring across every venue.
Topgolf is the clearest example. The company operates more than 100 high-tech venues worldwide, and each one is an autonomous edge data center. Each venue runs a demanding mix of Kubernetes microservices, Windows and Linux servers, camera systems with machine learning, ball-tracking analytics, state-specific compliance applications and AV integration. Topgolf venue deployments are moving from six-node Dell VxRail clusters to three-node VergeOS clusters on Dell PowerEdge, cutting hardware and power at each site with no loss of performance.
“We’re a technology company masquerading as a sports and entertainment company. At Topgolf, technology is the heart of our player experience. Without it, we’re a driving range with an attached restaurant and bar.”
Scott Forehand, Manager of Global Infrastructure, Topgolf
Gaming and hospitality operators see the same pattern. Saratoga Casino Holdings, a four-property gaming operator, moved to VergeOS on hardware it chose itself and held performance through the change.
“If you blindfolded me, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”
Scott Bartgis, Corporate Director of IT, Saratoga Casino Holdings, on VergeOS performance
Branch Sites Without Local IT Staff
Remote and branch offices rarely have dedicated IT staff. Every visit costs time and travel, and every extra product at the site is one more thing to break. These locations need central management through a single pane of glass, built-in backup and recovery, and efficient two- or three-node configurations. They also need to scale without a redesign, using the same software as the core.
VergeOS fits small sites well. A two-node cluster runs compute, storage, networking and protection with no separate storage array or backup appliance. If a node fails, VergeOS restarts its virtual machines on the surviving node. When a site grows, IT adds nodes to the same instance.
SkiBig3, which sells passes for three ski resorts in Banff National Park, runs every service on a two-node all-flash VergeOS cluster. That includes Active Directory, DNS, the firewall and the MS SQL applications that validate lift passes at the bottom of the runs. If those applications stop, skiers cannot get on the lift.
“VMware is so complex, you must be certified to have a chance of operating it. VergeOS, by comparison, is so easy to use you can figure out most tasks by clicking around in the GUI or going through the self-paced training on the VergeIO website. It is just one package instead of a never-ending list of add-ons.”
Mitch Matula, IT Manager, SkiBig3
Small teams benefit the same way. InterBel Telephone in northwest Montana runs all of IT with one person. The VergeOS lab took under two hours to build, new nodes take fifteen minutes to add, and one interface replaced two separate systems.
Autonomous at the Site, Visible from the Core
Edge sites often run specialized applications close to where data is created, such as cameras, sensors and local analytics. They need high availability and integrated data protection, and they must keep working through a WAN interruption or a local outage. IT still needs to see and manage every edge site from one place.
VergeOS packs a full data center into a small footprint. Customers often deploy two mini-servers at an edge site, a data center that fits into a shoebox, with the same services as the core. Each site runs on its own and reports to central management.
Topgolf runs the same VergeOS architecture at its core data center in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and at every venue, which simplifies maintenance, replication and automation across locations. The real-time demands at each venue call for autonomous edge clusters with no central dependency. Toptracer, the company’s ball-tracing system, pushes about 40TB of camera data per day in a typical 102-bay venue, and runs inside the VergeOS cluster.
“VergeOS is smart enough to run efficiently on three, and that means real savings.”
Scott Forehand, Manager of Global Infrastructure, Topgolf
Managing Hundreds of Sites as One
The hardest part of distributed IT is not any single site. It is running all of them together: upgrades, policies, monitoring and audits across dozens or hundreds of locations. VergeOS handles this with Site Manager and Virtual Data Centers (VDCs). A VDC is an isolated environment with its own compute, storage, networking and policies, so each tenant behaves like an independent data center.
Topgolf aligns its VDC tenants to three U.S. time zones, East, Central and West. That structure supports backup and DR workflows, staggered upgrades and regional policy controls. The team integrated VergeOS into its observability platform through native APIs and gained real-time visibility into site status, storage health and replication state.
“With VergeIO, we have been able to segregate our deployment into tenants by time zone, making upgrades and maintenance much easier. We’ve even been able to leverage tenancy to build nested labs within a single VergeIO cluster, which has saved [us] considerably on the requirement for lab hardware.”
Scott Forehand, Manager of Global Infrastructure, Topgolf
Upgrades show the difference most clearly. In one example, the team upgraded a VergeOS venue cluster during business hours, the day after migrating it, with no visible impact on active customers. Topgolf now upgrades the entire fleet in three weeks. Platform upgrades used to take two to three months and required scheduled downtime.
Data Protection at Every Site
Remote sites are where backup most often goes wrong. Separate backup software and hardware at each location add cost, and restores depend on someone being available to run them. VergeOS builds protection into the platform at every site.
- ioClone takes crash-consistent, space-efficient, immutable snapshots with no performance impact.
- ioGuardian detects, isolates and repairs faulty data blocks and keeps applications online after a hardware or media failure.
- ioReplicate replicates between sites and tenants at the workload or tenant level for disaster recovery.
Topgolf found that the protection built into VergeOS met its operational and compliance requirements and retired a separate backup product. For security operations, Topgolf pairs VergeOS snapshots with Veeam for threat hunting and ransomware protection. SkiBig3 takes a snapshot every hour, keeps a daily snapshot for one month, and uses Veeam to back up those snapshots for longer-term retention.
Automation matters at the edge too. Before VergeOS, a power loss at a Topgolf venue meant 30 to 45 minutes of manual work. Now VergeOS APIs drive the entire sequence, and sites boot at least 50 percent faster with no wait for the storage layer to re-validate.
“We spent 8 months trying to automate this on VxRail, and it failed to work reliably. With VergeOS, it took less than a month, and now it just works.”
Jason Sova, Architect for Enterprise Infrastructure, Topgolf
Fewer Nodes, Hardware You Choose
Multiplying a hardware appliance across hundreds of sites multiplies its cost. Data center inflation makes that worse as server, flash and memory prices rise. VergeOS runs on standard x86 servers from the vendor the organization chooses, and needs fewer nodes per site.
Topgolf replaced 650 VxRail hosts with roughly 400 commodity Dell PowerEdge servers in about six months, and reports 87 percent lower comparative hardware spend and a 77 percent decline in software costs. Saratoga Casino Holdings came in about 50 percent below an appliance quote at the same size and eliminated $50,000 a year in storage maintenance. InterBel Telephone finished its refresh more than 28 percent under budget.
| Location | What it needs | How VergeOS delivers it |
|---|---|---|
| Venues | Nonstop operation, live upgrades | Upgrades during business hours, fast recovery |
| Remote offices | No local staff, small footprint | Two- and three-node clusters, central management |
| Edge sites | Autonomy and central oversight | Full services on site, one interface for every site |
| Core data center | Consistency with every site | The same software and operating model everywhere |
| Every site | Data protection without extra products | ioClone, ioGuardian and ioReplicate built in |
Private AI Where the Data Lives
Venues and edge sites generate data that is most valuable close to where it is created. VergeOS supports private, on-premises AI for local analytics and inference. VergeIQ, the AI framework built into VergeOS, runs inference, RAG pipelines and model training alongside traditional workloads with no external orchestration layer such as Kubernetes.
Topgolf deployed two VergeOS nodes with NVIDIA L40 GPUs that stand ready for VergeIQ, and plans to use them for real-time swing analysis, shot trajectory modeling and personalized player metrics.
“We started this AI project before COVID. VergeOS gives us the platform to finally finish it, without sending data to the cloud and without much additional spend.”
Jason Sova, Architect for Enterprise Infrastructure, Topgolf
One Platform from Core to Edge
Distributed organizations should not need a different stack, a different console and a different support contract for every kind of location. VergeOS runs the same software at the core data center, at every venue, in every branch office and at every edge site, with high availability, data protection and central management built in. Sites get smaller and simpler, and IT manages the whole footprint as one.
Read the full stories from Topgolf, SkiBig3, Saratoga Casino Holdings and InterBel Telephone, or see more customer stories.
Plan Your Multi-Site Infrastructure
Talk with a VergeIO architect about running every venue, branch and edge site on one platform, from the core data center to a two-node remote site.