Sheetz Cuts VMware Ties Amid Price Hikes

Sheetz, a US convenience store chain, is undertaking a massive migration of its virtualization infrastructure, moving 838 locations away from VMware. The company is transitioning approximately 11,000 virtual machines from VMware vSphere to StorMagic's SvHCI. This strategic move was necessitated by Broadcom's new licensing structure, which includes mandatory subscriptions and long-term commitments, creating budget uncertainties for Sheetz.

Sheetz has already completed the migration for over 600 stores, with an average of 200 locations transitioning each month. The company anticipates the entire process will conclude in approximately four months. This migration leverages Sheetz's prior positive experience with StorMagic's SvSAN, which has been used alongside VMware for critical in-store applications since 2019.

Gary Sliver, director of platform engineering at Sheetz, highlighted that the migration could be managed remotely, avoiding the need to send technicians to each site, thus saving significant costs. The transition required meticulous planning and heavy automation to minimize disruption to the 24/7/365 retail operations. StorMagic is actively targeting large, distributed enterprises like Sheetz, which face similar IT challenges at numerous distributed locations as smaller businesses.

Other major enterprises, including Allstate, T-Mobile, and Tesco, are also reportedly migrating away from VMware following Broadcom's acquisition. Gartner previously estimated that up to 35 percent of VMware workloads might migrate by 2028.