UK retail giant Tesco appears to have decided to replace VMware with Proxmox in its stores. A job ad for a new Head of Software Engineering: Edge Platform role says the gig involves leading “two major, interconnected engineering priorities: modernising Tesco’s edge virtualisation estate through the migration from VMware to Proxmox, and building a robust, scalable software-driven Edge Management Platform to provision, manage, monitor and maintain the retail edge estate throughout its lifecycle.” The stakes are high because the job ad says Tesco’s Edge Platform “provides the underlying computing environment and software capabilities that enable applications to run across our stores.” “Store technology must remain dependable despite connectivity disruptions, constrained local resources and the complexity of managing software and infrastructure changes across thousands of locations. Failures or poorly executed changes can directly affect store operations, colleague productivity and customer experience.” Whoever scores the job will “own the engineering strategy and execution of Tesco’s migration from VMware to Proxmox across the edge estate, delivering a secure, reliable and cost-effective alternative virtualisation platform” – and do it from Bengaluru, India. One KPI is “Safe and predictable migration from VMware to Proxmox, successful validation of required store configurations, reduced legacy dependencies and effective operational handover.” In case you came in late, Proxmox is an open-source virtualization platform offered by an Austrian company. The product has gained considerable interest as a VMware alternative for edge, hyperconverged, and basic server virtualization scenarios. Proxmox is trying to grow into a full software-defined datacenter contender, too. Independent analyst Michael Warrilow rates [PDF] Proxmox as technically strong but warns would-be users will need to find a support partner because until recently the company only offered support during business hours in Austria…