SvHCI - Supporting a Transition of 850 Gas Stations in the US From SvSAN & VMware – StorMagic Support

This use case describes an enterprise ROBO deployment across approximately 850 gas stations in the United States, transitioning an established StorMagic SvSAN and VMware environment to StorMagic SvHCI.

Use Case: Enterprise ROBO Product: SvHCI ~850 Gas Stations Location: United States 600+ Locations Transitioned

Solution: StorMagic SvHCI provides a standardized two-node edge platform for distributed gas station locations, supporting business-critical store and pumping applications while enabling centralized deployment, management, and witness services.

Enterprise ROBO – ~850 US Gas Stations

Expand the sections below to review the environment, distributed architecture, workloads, transition from SvSAN to SvHCI, centralized operations, and Windows 11 replacement process.

Environment Overview

This enterprise ROBO use case represents a distributed StorMagic environment across approximately 850 gas stations in the United States.

The organization has been a StorMagic SvSAN customer since 2019, with locations using two-node SvSAN and VMware clusters on Dell R440 and R450 systems.

More than 600 locations already in place have transitioned to StorMagic SvHCI.

~850 Locations SvSAN Customer Since 2019 600+ Transitioned to SvHCI 2-Node Clusters 15-20 VMs Dell R440 / R450

Enterprise ROBO – ~850 US Gas Stations reference architecture.

Enterprise ROBO reference architecture showing centrally managed two-node StorMagic SvHCI deployments across approximately 850 US gas station locations

Distributed Solution Architecture

Each location uses a two-node clustered architecture to support the virtualized workloads required at the gas station.

The reference architecture shows the distributed sites connected to centralized services at the HQ location for deployment, management, and witness functions.

Component	Use Case Detail
Site architecture	Two-node cluster
Virtual machines	15-20 VMs
Existing server platforms	Dell R440 / R450
HQ functions	Deploy, manage, and witness
Distributed estate	Approximately 850 US gas station locations

Distributed ROBO architecture: The use case combines two-node infrastructure at individual gas station locations with centralized deployment, management, and witness functions.

Store Workloads

Each location supports approximately 15-20 virtual machines with a mixture of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows 10 LTSC workloads.

The distributed infrastructure supports several applications required for gas station operations.

Workload	Use Case Detail
Operating systems	Mixture of RHEL and Windows 10 LTSC
Credit controller	Store workload
Kitchen	Store workload
PoS	Point-of-sale workload
Pumping applications	JVM-based applications

Edge workloads: The local virtualized environment supports credit controller, kitchen, point-of-sale, and JVM-based pumping applications.

SvSAN to SvHCI Transition

The organization has used StorMagic SvSAN since 2019 with two-node SvSAN and VMware clusters running on Dell R440 and R450 systems.

More than 600 existing locations have transitioned to StorMagic SvHCI.

Environment	Use Case Detail
Original environment	Two-node SvSAN + VMware
Server platforms	Dell R440 / R450
SvSAN customer since	2019
Transitioned locations	600+
Current platform	StorMagic SvHCI

Transition: The use case shows an established SvSAN and VMware customer transitioning more than 600 existing distributed locations to StorMagic SvHCI.

Centralized Operations

The reference architecture shows centralized services at the HQ location supporting the distributed site environment.

HQ Function	Role
Deploy	Central deployment function for the distributed environment.
Manage	Central management function for the distributed environment.
Witness	Central witness function for the distributed environment.

HQ location: Deployment, management, and witness functions are shown centrally within the reference architecture.

Windows 11 Replacement Process

The environment is performing a rolling replacement to Windows 11.

The source use case identifies OVF templates and Ansible as part of this rolling replacement process.

Component	Use Case Detail
Target operating system	Windows 11
Deployment format	OVF templates
Automation	Ansible
Deployment approach	Rolling replacement

Lifecycle: Windows 11 is being introduced through a rolling replacement process using OVF templates and Ansible.