Case Study – Migrating from VMware to Proxmox for Synergy Retail – A Cost-Effective and Flexible Alternative
Overview
Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, many businesses—particularly in the retail, warehousing, and logistics industries—have faced significant challenges. Increased licensing costs, a shift to subscription-only models, and slower support response times have made VMware a less viable solution for IT teams seeking flexibility and long-term value.
Synergy Retail, a growing UK-based retail and warehousing company, faced these exact pressures. With our support at Cyberdan, they successfully migrated from VMware to Proxmox Virtual Environment—an open-source, enterprise-grade virtualization platform—gaining cost savings, improved performance and vendor independence.
Synergy’s Challenges
Increased Licensing Costs
The substantial rise in VMware licensing fees imposed following Broadcom’s acquisition made it an increasingly unsustainable solution for the Synergy’s IT budget. The cost-to-benefit ratio was no longer justifiable, prompting the company to seek a more affordable alternative.
Complex Licensing Model
The new licensing structure introduced by Broadcom added unnecessary complexity, making it difficult for IT administrators to manage compliance, track licensing requirements, and plan for future scalability. The shift from perpetual licensing to a subscription-based model further exacerbated the financial burden.
Need for Flexibility & Open-Source Solutions
Synergy Retail wanted a virtualisation platform that would provide greater transparency, control and ease of management—without being locked into a single vendor’s ecosystem. The ability to customise and adapt the solution to their specific requirements was a crucial factor in their decision.
Our Solution : Migration to Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE)
We recommended and executed a migration to Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) which is an open-source, enterprise-ready hypervisor that offers a powerful, scalable and cost-effective alternative to VMware. Before the migration took place, we’ve been using Proxmox for just under 1 year use it fully in our production environments and so far and it has proved be reliable and stable in which we have now advised this as an alternative. The migration process was conducted systematically to ensure a seamless transition with minimal downtime.
Step 1 : Assessment & Planning
- Conducted a full audit of the existing VMware infrastructure, analysing workloads, storage configurations, networking setup and VM dependencies to would need to be migrated.
- Identified potential compatibility challenges and developed a detailed migration roadmap to minimize operational disruptions.
Step 2 : Proof of Concept (PoC)
- Deployed a small-scale Proxmox test environment to validate VM compatibility, assess performance benchmarks and ensure that all critical applications functioned as expected before full migration of other hosts and virtual machines.
- Evaluated HA (High Availability) configurations and redundancy strategies with full testing.
Step 3 : Data & VM Migration
- We utilized Veeam a third-party backup tool to migrate virtual machine disks from VMware ESXi to Proxmox to then use as disks to create virtual machines from while ensuring data integrity.
Step 4 : High Availability & Redundancy Configuration
- Established Proxmox Clustering with High Availability (HA) to distribute workloads across multiple node, this will also allow us as the support company to carry out OS patching of the hosts to fail over VMs to different hosts to perform these maintenance tasks whilst maintaining high availability.
- Implemented automatic failover mechanisms, ensuring that workloads remained operational even in the event of hardware failure.
Step 5 : Training & Handover
- Provided comprehensive training sessions to Synergy’s IT team on managing Proxmox, including CLI commands, web-based GUI administration and best practices for monitoring VM performance.
- Delivered thorough documentation and step-by-step guides to ensure a smooth transition for ongoing management.
Results & Business Benefits
1. Significant Cost Savings
- Eliminated VMware’s high licensing fees, reducing overall virtualization costs by over 50%.
- Avoided the need for costly VMware support contracts, leveraging the strong open-source Proxmox community and Cyberdan’s expert support instead.
2. Simplified Management & Greater Control
- Proxmox’s intuitive web-based management interface and command-line tools made it easier for IT teams to administer and maintain the environment.
- Provided complete control over VM configurations without restrictive licensing policies.
3. Improved Flexibility & Vendor Independence
- No vendor lock-in, enabling future scalability without concerns about rising licensing fees or contract renewals.
- Seamless integration with open-source tools and third-party solutions for backup, monitoring, and automation.
4. Seamless Performance & High Availability
- Workloads operated at comparable or improved performance levels post-migration, with optimised resource utilisation.
- Live migration capabilities within Proxmox allowed administrators to move workloads between nodes without downtime.
5. Enhanced Business Continuity
- High Availability (HA) architecture ensured that workloads continued running even during maintenance, hardware failure, or security patching.
- IT teams could apply security updates and system patches without requiring system downtime, ensuring 24/7 business operations.
Conclusion
Migrating from VMware to Proxmox provided Synergy Retail with a cost-effective, high-performance and flexible virtualization platform, free from the financial and operational constraints introduced by Broadcom’s licensing changes.
By adopting Proxmox’s multi-node clustered environment, Synergy Retail now benefits from built-in high availability, allowing live migration of virtual machines between hosts with zero impact to end users. This means the IT team can perform routine maintenance and apply security patches during business hours—without disruption to services or downtime.
Ready to Migrate?
If your organization is facing challenges due to VMware’s rising costs or increasing complexity, Cyberdan can support you with a seamless, strategic migration to Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE).
Contact us today to learn how we can modernise and optimise your virtualisation infrastructure with scalable, future-ready solutions tailored for the retail, warehousing and logistics sectors.
