Are You Migration-Curious? Sheetz Shows What Leaving VMware Actually Looks Like

When VMware was acquired by Broadcom in 2023 and licensing prices began soaring, some thought a mass exodus would occur. What we’ve actually seen is a slow trickle of migrations.

Many companies have been stuck with multiyear contracts, so they had no choice but to sit tight and plan for their next move. Others don’t really want to move at all, happy to eat the rising costs before they even consider touching a migration. After all, the devil they know still beats the devil they’d have to build from scratch.

It’s fair enough, right? Virtualization is at the heart of enterprise infrastructure, so moving away is expensive and tedious (almost by design…). In fact, a CloudBolt survey released earlier this year actually found 86% of organizations are actively working to shrink their VMware dependencies, even though most of those migrations are still in planning stages.

Those who are moving on from VMware seem to be heading toward greener pastures. Some are going to hyperscale cloud providers; others are turning to Nutanix, Hyper-V, Proxmox, or edge-focused solutions like StorMagic.

Sheetz, a popular convenience store and gas station chain, is further along than some. The convenience store chain just announced it’s already migrated more than 700 of its 830 retail locations from VMware to StorMagic’s hyperconverged infrastructure platform. The full rollout expected within four months.

In a Q&A with HostingAdvice, Sheetz’s infrastructure team manager Scott Robertson explained to us what prompted the move, with licensing changes and rising costs pushing the company to look elsewhere. That’s a near-identical combination hosting providers should expect to hear from their own enterprise clients who are, shall we say, migration-curious.

What made Sheetz decide it was time to move away from VMware?

Broadcom’s licensing changes were the primary catalyst for our evaluation of alternative virtualization platforms. The projected cost increases, combined with a shift to subscription-based licensing and a required five-year commitment, raised concerns around long-term financial predictability and increased vendor dependence.

You’ve already migrated more than 700 stores remotely. What helped make that possible, and what was the biggest challenge?

Automation and the VM Import utility played a critical role in enabling the migration at scale. One of the primary challenges was the relative immaturity of the tooling, particularly the limited API documentation available at the time, which required additional testing and development effort.

Additionally, operating in a 24x7x365 retail environment necessitated a strong focus on minimizing business disruption, requiring careful planning and automation to reduce the impact of migration activities on store operations.

How important was it that you could reuse your existing Dell servers instead of buying new hardware?

The ability to leverage our existing hardware was a critical factor in the success of the project. From a logistical standpoint, deploying and installing new hardware across all store locations within the required timeline would not have been feasible.

Additionally, given the significant increase in hardware costs driven by AI-related demand and broader market pressures, we wanted to avoid undertaking a large-scale hardware refresh at a time when pricing remains elevated. Preserving our existing infrastructure enabled us to meet project timelines, control costs, and defer major capital expenditures until market conditions become more favorable.

How did you keep stores running smoothly while making the switch?

A combination of detailed SOPs, automation, and strong deployment training enabled efficient execution. We also leveraged pre-staging activities prior to cutover, significantly reducing overnight migration time and business impact. While this introduced a brief period of reduced redundancy, the risk was carefully assessed and outweighed by the operational benefits.

What’s one lesson you learned that could help other companies with lots of locations?

Given the project timeline and the maturity of the platform at the time, additional implementation time would have been beneficial. Greater API documentation and technical guidance from StorMagic would also have accelerated development efforts and reduced the complexity associated with building and refining the automation workflows.

Did anything about the migration surprise you?

I was extremely pleased with both the speed of execution and the overall success of the deployment. Despite the scale of the rollout, only a small number of stores experienced extended outages, and those incidents were primarily attributable to deviations from established installation procedures. Overall, the project has been progressing with minimal disruption and has exceeded our expectations for both efficiency and operational impact.

What advice would you give to IT teams that are thinking about making a similar move?

Ensure adequate time is allocated for planning, design, and validation before execution. In our case, elements of planning, development, and implementation occurred concurrently to meet project timelines, which increased complexity and risk.

Organizations should thoroughly evaluate the operational, technical, and business impacts of replacing VMware and perform comprehensive due diligence when selecting an alternative platform. Equally important is choosing a solution that not only meets current virtualization requirements but also supports future containerization and broader infrastructure modernization initiatives.

Sheetz operates 830+ locations, and the StorMagic migration is being handled entirely remotely with no on-site technicians required. The company has been averaging around 200 store migrations a month, putting the full rollout on track to wrap within four months. Read more about the Sheetz-StorMagic migration here.