Virtualization
Proxmox consulting in Finland
Migrations to Proxmox, and a straight answer on whether it fits your environment before you commit. I have operated Proxmox in production for years, going back to running it under a hosting business of my own.
Start a conversationWhat I help with
Migration to Proxmox
Moving workloads off VMware, Hyper-V, bare metal or a public cloud onto Proxmox VE, in tested waves with a rollback at every step.
Landscape and fit evaluation
An honest assessment of whether Proxmox suits your workloads, your team and your constraints, before you spend anything on a migration.
Platform design and build
Cluster topology, shared storage on Ceph or ZFS, networking, backup and high availability, designed as a platform rather than a pile of virtual machines.
Operations and hardening
Patching, backup verification, disaster recovery, and a hardened baseline you can defend in an audit. Including fully air-gapped Proxmox.
VMware to Proxmox migration
The changes to VMware licensing and packaging after the Broadcom acquisition put a real number on a question many teams had been avoiding: what does this hypervisor actually cost us, and what are the alternatives. Proxmox VE is the most common destination, because it is open source, production proven, and does not tie you to a licensing model that can change under you.
A move off VMware is not a weekend of exporting virtual machines. It is a project with a shape:
- Inventory what actually runs, and what can be retired on the way.
- Decide the storage and network topology on the Proxmox side.
- Move workloads in tested waves, with a rollback for each.
- Cut over, verify, and decommission the old platform only once the new one has earned it.
The interesting parts are never the machine copy. They are the shared storage, the network, the backup strategy, and the things nobody wrote down. The same approach covers Hyper-V, bare metal, and repatriation from a public cloud onto hardware you own.
When Proxmox fits, and when it does not
A migration that should not happen is worse than no migration. I will tell you which case you are in before you commit to it.
Proxmox is a strong fit when
- you want to own your virtualization layer rather than rent it
- you run on your own hardware, on-premise or colocated
- you need an air-gapped or sovereign environment
- VMware licensing has become a cost or a risk you want off the books
Proxmox is the wrong answer when
- your workloads genuinely belong in a managed cloud service
- you have no appetite to operate the platform, and no partner to do it for you
- a specific vendor certification requires VMware
Questions people ask
- Is Proxmox ready for production use?
- Yes. Proxmox VE runs serious production workloads, and has for years. The question is rarely whether Proxmox can do the job. It is whether the design around it, the shared storage, the networking, the backup and the high availability, has been done properly. That design is the work.
- How does Proxmox compare to VMware?
- Proxmox is open source, runs on standard hardware, and does not tie you to a licensing model that can change under you. VMware has a longer enterprise track record and some ecosystem integrations Proxmox does not. For many self-hosted environments the trade now favours Proxmox, but not for every case, which is exactly what a fit evaluation is for.
- How long does a VMware to Proxmox migration take?
- It depends on the number of workloads, the storage and network complexity, and how much can be retired along the way. A small environment can move in a few weeks. A large or tightly coupled one is a phased project. I scope it honestly before committing to a timeline, not after.
- Can Proxmox run in an air-gapped or sovereign environment?
- Yes, and this is a particular specialisation. Running Proxmox with no internet access, with an offline update path and a hardened baseline you can defend in an audit, is exactly the kind of environment I build.
- Do you offer ongoing support, or only migrations?
- Both. I run the migration, and operate the platform afterwards: patching, backup verification, disaster recovery and hardening. You can also take a finished platform and run it yourself, with the documentation to do so.
- Can you help us decide whether to move to Proxmox at all?
- Yes. That is the landscape and fit evaluation. You get a clear recommendation, including do not migrate if that is the right answer for your situation.
More in the full capabilities.