VMware Replacement with Proxmox HA and Ceph
An open-source, licence-free virtualization platform designed, built and supported by MassiveGRID. We run Proxmox VE high-availability clusters with Ceph storage in production for our own public cloud, and we migrate VMware estates of 3 to 100+ nodes onto the same architecture.
VMware Licensing Is Now a Risk You Cannot Control
Since the Broadcom acquisition, vSphere customers face terms that were set without them.
Subscription-Only Licensing
Perpetual licences are gone. Every vSphere, vSAN and vCenter entitlement is now a recurring subscription, so the cost of standing still rises every renewal cycle.
Per-Core Minimums and Bundled SKUs
Licences are counted per core with a minimum per CPU, and features that used to be bought separately now arrive in bundles. Small hosts pay for cores they do not have and features they do not use.
Renewal Increases
Renewal quotes that run several times the previous contract are now routine. Service providers and enterprises with large vSphere estates carry a licensing exposure they can neither budget for nor negotiate down.
Background reading: VMware licensing after Broadcom and the best VMware alternatives compared.
Proxmox VE for Compute, Ceph for Storage
Two open-source projects that together replace the vSphere and vSAN stack without a per-core or per-socket licence.
- KVM virtual machines and LXC containers on one platform, managed from one web interface and one API
- Built-in high availability: automatic VM restart on a surviving node and live migration across nodes for maintenance
- Integrated backup with Proxmox Backup Server: deduplication, incremental snapshots, encryption and remote sync
- Software-defined networking, VLANs, a distributed firewall and API-driven automation (Terraform, Ansible, REST)
- No hypervisor licence. The only paid element is the optional enterprise repository subscription for tested updates
- Distributed, self-healing block, file and object storage on commodity nodes, replicated three times by default
- Hyper-converged with compute on the same nodes, or as a separate storage cluster for large estates
- No single point of failure. Capacity and throughput scale by adding nodes, not by replacing arrays
- Replaces vSAN and proprietary SAN or NAS licensing
- Existing NAS or SAN retained where the investment must be preserved: Proxmox mounts NFS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel storage alongside Ceph
What Replaces What
| VMware component | Proxmox and Ceph equivalent | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| vSphere ESXi | Proxmox VE on KVM | Same hardware in most cases; VMs are converted, not rebuilt |
| vCenter Server | Proxmox cluster manager and REST API | Built into every node, no separate management appliance to license |
| vSAN | Ceph (RBD block, CephFS, RGW object) | Triple replication or erasure coding, self-healing on node loss |
| vSphere HA and DRS | Proxmox HA manager and CRS scheduling | Automatic restart of failed VMs; live migration for balancing and maintenance |
| vMotion and Storage vMotion | Live migration and online disk move | Zero-downtime moves between nodes and between storage pools |
| Veeam or vSphere Data Protection | Proxmox Backup Server | Incremental forever, deduplicated, encrypted, synced to a second site |
| NSX (basic segmentation) | Proxmox SDN, VLANs, VXLAN and firewall | Per-tenant isolation without an add-on licence; advanced NSX features are scoped per case |
| Site Recovery Manager | Ceph replication, PBS remote sync, second-site cluster | Geographic resilience to a MassiveGRID region or your own second facility |
Technical detail: Proxmox vs ESXi vs Hyper-V, Proxmox Ceph setup, cluster sizing and how we run Ceph in our own cloud.
What MassiveGRID Delivers
A fixed-price assessment is the standard entry point. Everything after it is scoped from what the assessment finds.
Inventory of the current VMware estate: hosts, clusters, VM counts and sizes, workload dependencies, storage and network mapping, backup and DR arrangements. Target sizing for the Proxmox and Ceph design, and a per-estate calculation of what the change saves.
Deliverable: estate inventory, target design and cost comparisonCluster architecture for 3 to 100+ nodes, Ceph pool and CRUSH design, network fabric (dedicated cluster, storage and public networks), HA policies and fencing, backup and DR topology. Built on your existing servers where they are supported, on new hardware you own, or in a MassiveGRID facility.
Deliverable: production cluster, documented and load-testedStaged VM conversion with minimal downtime, ordered by dependency. Each workload is validated on the new platform before its VMware copy is retired, with a rollback plan per wave. Windows, Linux and appliance VMs are handled with their specific driver and licensing needs.
Deliverable: migrated estate with per-workload validation report24/7 NOC monitoring, patching, capacity management and incident response by MassiveGRID under a per-node support plan, or a structured knowledge transfer so your own team runs the platform with us as second and third line.
Deliverable: managed operations or handover package with runbooksReplication to a MassiveGRID region or to your own second facility for geographic resilience, with tested failover procedures and recovery objectives agreed per workload. See disaster recovery and backup services.
Deliverable: replicated second site with tested failoverWe Operate This Platform, We Do Not Sell the Hardware
In Production Since 2003
Proxmox HA with Ceph, NAS and SAN runs our own public cloud clusters and the private clouds we operate for customers. The architecture we propose is the one we depend on ourselves, and its technology stack is public.
ISO 27001 Certified Operations
Managed infrastructure for regulated and compliance-driven workloads, with ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified processes, GDPR compliance and a 100% uptime SLA on our managed platforms.
Vendor-Neutral
We operate the platform and are paid for engineering and operations, not for servers, storage arrays or licences. Hardware is reused where supported, bought from the vendor of your choice, or hosted in one of 700+ datacenters worldwide.
Typical Outcomes
Elimination of hypervisor and vSAN licensing, hardware reuse where servers are supported, storage that scales linearly, and an operating model you can run in-house or outsource to MassiveGRID. Exact savings are calculated per estate during the assessment.
Offer VMware Exit Under Your Own Brand
System integrators, MSPs and hosting providers offer VMware exit as a professional-services engagement plus optional managed operations. MassiveGRID provides the architecture, the migration engineering and Tier 2 and 3 operations under the partner's brand, while the partner owns the customer relationship and first-line support.
- Fixed-price assessment as the standard entry point
- Design, build and migration by MassiveGRID engineers
- Optional 24/7 operations under the partner's SLA
- Second-site DR in a MassiveGRID region or the partner's facility
- Knowledge transfer so the partner's team can take over
VMware Replacement Questions
Where to Go Next
Start with a Fixed-Price Assessment
We inventory your VMware estate, design the Proxmox and Ceph target and calculate what the change saves, before you commit to anything else.