Sheetz moves 838 stores from VMware to StorMagic
The convenience-store chain is shifting about 11,000 virtual machines away from Broadcom’s VMware platform, with more than 600 stores already migrated.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
2 min read
Sheetz is moving its store virtualization systems off VMware across 838 convenience-store locations, replacing VMware vSphere with StorMagic’s SvHCI. The project affects about 11,000 virtual machines and shows another large retail operator changing course after VMware became part of Broadcom’s platform.
Scott Robertson, infrastructure team manager at Sheetz, told Ars Technica that the company has used VMware virtualization in its stores since 2019. Each location has been running the software on two Dell R440 or R450-series servers, Robertson said.
Sheetz is keeping that Dell hardware in place while it changes the virtualization layer, according to Robertson. The company is moving 12 to 14 virtual machines at each store from VMware vSphere to StorMagic’s SvHCI, he told Ars Technica.
Robertson said two more virtual machines at each store are set to be replaced in the coming months as part of a separate move from Windows 10 to Windows 11. When the broader project is complete, Sheetz will have shifted about 11,000 virtual machines from Broadcom’s virtualization platform, according to the figures Robertson provided to Ars Technica.
Rollout is already past 600 stores
Sheetz has completed the migration at more than 600 stores so far, according to a company announcement cited by Ars Technica. The rollout has been moving at an average pace of 200 stores per month, the announcement said.
At that rate, Sheetz expects to finish the remaining store migrations within four months, according to the same announcement. The company has 838 locations included in the project.
The change centers on store-level systems rather than a data-center hardware refresh. Robertson told Ars Technica that Sheetz is still using the original Dell servers deployed for its VMware setup, meaning the project swaps the virtualization software while leaving the underlying server footprint in place.
VMware vSphere has long been used to run multiple virtual machines on shared server hardware. StorMagic’s SvHCI is taking over that role in the Sheetz stores, according to Robertson and the company announcement.
Ars Technica reported that Sheetz described Broadcom’s ownership of VMware as creating “too much uncertainty” for the retailer. Broadcom is the company behind the VMware virtualization platform that Sheetz is leaving, according to Robertson’s description of the migration.
This story draws on original reporting from Ars Technica.