01
Licensing Cost Review
FTT's platform licensing was due for renewal under a subscription model. Leadership targeted a structural reduction in recurring virtualisation spend without reducing capability.
Case Study
Achieving 80% Licensing Cost Reduction via VMware to Proxmox VE Migration
Force Ten Technologies Pvt. Ltd. — Financial Software Developer
Facing a virtualisation licensing renewal, Force Ten Technologies — a software developer serving Microfinance, NBFC, co-operative societies and rural banks — set out to reduce recurring platform costs. ISPL delivered a phased, rolling migration from VMware vSphere and Veeam to Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server — zero new hardware, zero VMs lost, every downtime threshold met.
Proxmox VEVMware MigrationProxmox Backup ServerDual SANFinancial SectorSilver Partner
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At A Glance
The transformation, in numbers.
80%
Licensing Cost Reduction
Zero
VMs Lost in Transition
$0
New Hardware Capex
5
Migration Phases
Background
A mature enterprise setup under financial pressure.
Force Ten Technologies Pvt. Ltd., a software developer providing services to Microfinance, NBFC, co-operative societies, rural banks and other financial institutions, operated a business-critical IT infrastructure built around a multi-node VMware vSphere cluster — hosting everything from mission-critical financial applications to supporting business functions, all demanding high availability.
The storage backbone was a dual SAN setup: two SAN switches connected to two SAN servers, providing centralized high-performance shared storage — a well-established standard in enterprise financial environments where data integrity is non-negotiable. For data protection, FTT ran Veeam Backup & Replication across an on-site primary and an off-site disaster recovery replica.
The environment was technically sound. The driver for change was commercial: a structural reduction in recurring licensing was the objective.
The Challenges
Five compounding pressures that made the status quo untenable.
02
Backup Infrastructure Tied to the Platform
FTT's data protection was built entirely around Veeam Backup & Replication — a capable solution, but one adding licensing overhead on top of VMware. With migration inevitable, retaining Veeam meant carrying a redundant cost misaligned with the new direction.
03
Workload Continuity Risk
Workloads carried unequal downtime tolerance — 40% Critical (max 1 hour), 30% Medium (up to 4 hours), and 30% Low (up to 24 hours), every window restricted to weekends and off-hours. Exceeding thresholds risked financial disruption and reputational exposure.
04
No New Hardware Permitted
FTT held a firm position of zero new hardware procurement. The entire migration and new platform commissioning had to execute within the existing physical footprint — leaving no margin for error in capacity planning and sequencing.
05
Orphaned VM Workloads
A subset of VMs existed only within the Veeam backup repository with no active presence in VMware. These workloads still held business relevance and needed to be recovered and re-platformed — adding a further layer of complexity to migration scope.
Workload Downtime Classification
| Category | Share | Permissible Downtime Window |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 40% | Max 1 hour (weekends, off-hours only) |
| Medium | 30% | Up to 4 hours (weekends, off-hours only) |
| Low | 30% | Up to 24 hours (weekends, off-hours only) |
Solution Proposed
A structured platform transition — entirely within existing hardware.
- 1Proxmox VE as Target Platform
Built on the KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, Proxmox VE was recommended for its per-host licensing elimination, native VMware migration tooling, cluster-native HA and live migration, full iSCSI/Fibre Channel SAN compatibility, and Proxmox's official enterprise subscription support.
- 2Phased Rolling Node Migration
Given the no-new-hardware constraint and tiered downtime sensitivity, ISPL proposed migrating node by node rather than a bulk cutover — the VMware cluster staying operational throughout, each Proxmox VE node validated before the next host was decommissioned, critical workloads migrated last.
- 3Existing SAN Infrastructure Reused
Rather than introducing new storage, ISPL leveraged the existing dual SAN setup. The ~40% available headroom was sufficient to carve dedicated LUNs for the Proxmox VE cluster without disrupting active VMware workloads during the transition.
- 4Recovery of Orphaned VMs
VMs present only in the Veeam repository were restored directly via Veeam's standard VM restore procedure and onboarded into the Proxmox VE cluster as part of migration scope — ensuring no workload was left behind.
- 5Proxmox Backup Server Replaces Veeam
Both Veeam servers were repurposed as Proxmox Backup Server nodes — mirroring the existing on-site primary / off-site replica design, with encryption at rest applied to all backup data, consistent with financial-sector data security expectations.
Implementation
Five phases. Every workload migrated. Every threshold met.
ISPL executed the migration in carefully sequenced phases — each validated before proceeding, all scheduled exclusively within permitted off-hour weekend windows aligned to workload downtime tiers.
01
Initial Proxmox VE Cluster Commissioning
Without touching any active workload, ISPL identified the VMware hosts running lowest-priority VMs and consolidated those onto remaining hosts — freeing two physical hosts. These were cleanly removed from vSphere, installed with Proxmox VE, and formed a 2-node PVE cluster. New LUNs were carved from existing SAN headroom and integrated as shared storage.
02
Initial Workload Migration to Proxmox VE
VMs from the two freed VMware hosts were migrated using Proxmox VE's built-in VMware migration tool — no third-party utilities. An offline method was chosen: clean shutdown before transfer to guarantee data consistency. Each VM was brought online and performance-validated with application owners before the next was started.
03
Rolling Node-by-Node Migration
For every remaining VMware host: workloads evacuated to other VMware nodes → host removed from vSphere → Proxmox VE installed → host joined the growing PVE cluster → VMs migrated offline → validated with application owners. Repeated until all hosts had been re-provisioned as Proxmox VE nodes. All migrations stayed within their downtime-tier windows.
04
Recovery of Orphaned VM Workloads
VMs existing only in the Veeam backup repository were restored directly from the Veeam backup server following Veeam's standard restore procedure, brought online within the Proxmox VE cluster, and validated — confirming the recovered workloads functioned as expected.
05
PBS Commissioning & Veeam Decommissioning
Both Veeam servers were decommissioned and repurposed as PBS nodes: a primary on-site PBS datastore integrated with the PVE cluster running scheduled backups with encryption at rest, and an off-site PBS node configured for encrypted replication. End-to-end backup and restore workflow validated before sign-off.
Before vs. After
From vendor dependency to platform independence.
Before
- Multi-node VMware vSphere cluster under subscription licensing
- Veeam Backup & Replication adding additional licensing overhead
- Dual SAN underutilised — ~40% headroom unused
- Orphaned VMs stranded in backup repository only
- No data protection encryption at rest
- Full vendor lock-in to a proprietary virtualization stack
After
- Proxmox VE cluster — open-source enterprise hypervisor, zero per-host licensing
- Proxmox Backup Server replacing Veeam — integrated, no extra licensing
- Existing dual SAN fully leveraged — zero new storage hardware purchased
- All orphaned VMs recovered and running in production
- Encryption at rest on all backup data, on-site and off-site
- Platform independence on open standards — no vendor lock-in
Outcomes
Unambiguous results across every success metric.
80%
Licensing Cost Reduction
The most immediate and quantifiable outcome — directly addressing the financial pressure that initiated the project.
0
VMs Lost in Transition
Complete workload migration including successful recovery of orphaned VMs from the Veeam repository.
0
Downtime Threshold Breaches
Every migration scheduled within permissible windows — Critical within 1 hour, no exceptions.
$0
Capital Expenditure
The entire transformation executed within the existing hardware footprint — a purely service-driven engagement.
This engagement demonstrates that organizations in the financial sector need not choose between cost efficiency and operational resilience. Platform independence from high-cost proprietary vendors is both achievable and sustainable.
About Illumia Solutions — As an official Proxmox partner with deep enterprise infrastructure expertise, ISPL delivers platform transformations that protect operational continuity at every step while achieving transformative reductions in infrastructure overhead.