Estracom, an Italian telecommunications provider from Tuscany, successfully migrated its virtualized infrastructure from VMware vCenter to Proxmox VE due to escalating licensing costs. This move took only 6 weeks and resulted in a 25% improvement in hardware utilization. The investment made for the migration was recouped in just 4 months.

As a smaller telecommunications provider focusing on excellent customer service, Estracom faced significant pressure from the unpredictable and ever-increasing licensing costs of their previous hypervisor solution. The situation became critical when changes to VMware’s licensing would have increased costs by a staggering 50-70%.

Before the migration, Estracom's core infrastructure included 320 virtual machines (VMs) supporting various customer-facing services and internal operations, running on 4 physical servers at a primary site and 4 at a secondary site. The company utilized VMware vCenter Server for management and Veeam Backup & Replication for data protection.

Soaring costs and vendor lock-in

Carlo Cerboni, CTO of Estracom, outlined the company’s requirements: “We needed a solution that was more cost-effective and predictable as well as simple to manage with a minimal learning curve, yet reliable and stable for customer-facing services, as well as capable of supporting our telecommunications and computing workloads.”

The solution also needed to support all VoIP services, including business PBX systems and residential phone services, managed security services for SMB customers (like customer firewalls), and backup and disaster recovery solutions for SMB customers, local enterprises, and public administration.

After evaluating several options, Proxmox VE was chosen for its comprehensive features and zero licensing costs.

Migration to Proxmox VE within 6 weeks

The migration to Proxmox VE was thoroughly prepared and completed in 6 weeks, with Estracom maintaining 99.97% uptime throughout the process.

Carlo Cerboni explained the process: “First we built a test cluster to validate the performance of our applications and test the backup and recovery procedures, management workflows, and high-availability (HA) functionality during a two-week planning phase.”

The execution phase took four weeks during planned maintenance windows, starting with internal services like email servers, file shares, monitoring tools, the customer portal, billing systems, and internal telephony infrastructure. Following the successful migration of internal services, customer-facing services such as VoIP switching, SIP trunking, security services, and managed backup services were migrated.

During the migration process, Estracom's overall IT infrastructure was optimized. Carlo Cerboni noted: “We consolidated 4 physical hosts of the primary site into a highly efficient Proxmox VE cluster adding a 5th node and we reduced the 4 physical hosts infrastructure of the secondary site to 2 newer generation hosts with increased performance.”

The company achieved seamless live migration capabilities, integrated Proxmox VE into their existing network monitoring and management procedures (including automated deployment and maintenance tasks using Cisco ACI and Ansible), the built-in replication features of Proxmox VE in a multi-site cluster reduced the complexity of the disaster recovery process, and the built-in backup solution reduced the overall storage requirements by 30%.

Strategic partnership with Seeweb

A crucial element of Estracom's infrastructure transformation was the strategic partnership with Proxmox Gold Partner Seeweb, a leading Italian provider of hosting and cloud services. Seeweb hosts Estracom's disaster recovery and backup infrastructure, providing enterprise-grade reliability through redundant dedicated fiber optic connectivity.

The dedicated fiber optic connections between Estracom's primary site and Seeweb's data centers ensure low-latency replication and rapid disaster recovery capabilities, while the redundant connectivity guarantees maximum uptime for critical backup and recovery operations. This robust infrastructure partnership has been fundamental in achieving the 99.97% uptime maintained throughout the migration process and beyond.

This partnership has proven invaluable to Estracom's success. Seeweb has consistently provided exceptional technical support and assistance throughout all of Estracom's operations, from the initial migration planning to ongoing infrastructure optimization. Their expertise in cloud infrastructure and deep understanding of business continuity requirements have made them an ideal partner for ensuring Estracom's services remain resilient and highly available.

Unprecedented savings and efficiency

The shift to Proxmox VE brought immediate and significant benefits:

• Massive cost savings: By eliminating licensing costs, Estracom generated annual savings of approximately 32,000 €. The migration investment of about 4,000 € in consulting and training had a payback period of only four months. The freed-up budget allowed for investment in new service offerings.
• Simplified management: The centralized web interface of Proxmox VE replaced multiple tools, while its unique multi-master design ensures that every Proxmox VE host can act as an infrastructure manager, eliminating the risk of single points of failure.
• Improved resource utilization: By optimizing VM placement, the company improved hardware utilization by 25%. They also used lightweight LXC containers for services like network monitoring, further improving resource efficiency.
• Faster deployment: Deployment speed increased, allowing Estracom to deploy customer services 60% faster and making it easier to add new customer services due to the absence of licensing concerns.

Success factors

Carlo Cerboni identified key success factors for the migration: “We started small and tested everything with non-critical services first.”

“We leveraged the huge, helpful Proxmox VE community for guidance and we documented everything. Thanks to thorough preparation, the Proxmox VE migration was a complete success, with measurable results from day one.”

Estracom now enjoys vendor independence, no longer constrained by proprietary licensing cycles, and can innovate without licensing concerns. This transformation not only improved service reliability and staff satisfaction but also proved that with the right technology and the right partners, a company can thrive by focusing on what truly matters: serving their customers and community.

The migration to Proxmox VE was more than just a cost-saving exercise—it was a strategic move that provided vendor independence and a foundation for future innovation. Estracom is now exploring new opportunities like edge computing and the integration of Kubernetes for cloud-native applications, all without the burden of prohibitive licensing fees.

“Our success demonstrates that small telcos can achieve enterprise-grade virtualization without enterprise-level costs,” Carlo Cerboni noted. “We eliminated a major cost factor while improving our services and positioning ourselves for the future.”

Carlo Cerboni
CTO

About Estracom S.p.A.
Estracom Spa is a telecommunications and managed services provider based in Prato, Italy. Established in 2001, the company has 15 employees. Estracom provides reliable internet, VoIP, managed IT, and network security solutions to SMBs, public administration, schools, enterprises, and residential customers.

About Proxmox partner: Seeweb
Seeweb is a leading Italian provider of hosting and cloud services, specializing in enterprise-grade infrastructure solutions. As a strategic partner for Estracom's disaster recovery and backup operations, Seeweb provides robust, reliable infrastructure with redundant dedicated fiber optic connectivity, ensuring business continuity and data protection for critical telecommunications services.