How the migration runs

A VMware exit is a sequencing problem before it is a software problem. The order things move in, what gets tested before anything is committed, and where you can stop and go back — that is what decides whether it goes well.

The work

Migration design

Target architecture, dependency mapping, storage and network design, backup and recovery approach, and the rollback position for every stage.

Pilot

A representative set of workloads moves first. Performance, backup and restore are tested on the new platform before anything else is committed.

Migration waves

Workloads move in controlled groups, each with an agreed downtime window and a rollback point that has been checked rather than assumed.

Infrastructure rebuild

Where it is needed: storage, monitoring, logging, identity, backup and network services. Only the layers you actually run.

Handover

Documentation, runbooks and knowledge transfer, so the platform is yours to operate rather than ours to keep.

Technologies we commonly use

The exact stack depends on what you already run and on what the assessment finds. These are the components we most often build with.

Virtualisation

Proxmox VE

Storage

Ceph, ZFS

Backup

Proxmox Backup Server

Monitoring

Prometheus, Grafana

Logging

Loki

Identity

Authentik, Keycloak

Networking

Netbird, Tailscale, OVS

Object storage

MinIO

All open source, so there are no licences to buy and no commission for us in recommending them. Where a commercial product you already own is the better answer, we say so.

What does not move cleanly

The list above says what replaces what. Some of it is not a like-for-like swap, and a few VMware features have no Proxmox equivalent at all. Those gaps decide how hard a migration is, and in a few cases whether it is worth doing.

See what does not move cleanly

How we split the work

We do the design and the difficult parts

The sequencing, the storage layer, and anything that can take production down.

Your team does the repetitive work

So they know the system afterwards, not just the documentation.

Everything is documented as we build it

Not written up at the end from memory.

You can stop after any stage

Each stage leaves you in a working state.

After handover

Some clients keep us on monthly for support and capacity planning. We can talk about that when the project is finished, not before.