Facing a restrictive virtualization environment that limited growth, rising licensing costs, and vendor lock-in, Linkser, one of Bolivia’s largest payment-processing companies, migrated its mission-critical infrastructure from VMware to Proxmox Virtual Environment. The migration was completed in under 30 days with zero disruption to productive services.

In the financial sector, stability and high availability are fundamental requirements. At the same time, infrastructure must be capable of scaling continuously to support a company’s growth and increasing transaction volumes. For Linkser, increasing demand, growing operational complexity, and long-term scalability requirements began to expose the limitations of their previous virtualization environment, making it increasingly important to evolve the infrastructure toward a more flexible and scalable foundation.

Breaking free from licensing constraints

Before adopting Proxmox Virtual Environment, Linkser operated a VMware-based virtualization environment that increasingly constrained efficient scaling of its infrastructure. Rising licensing costs created financial pressure, while vendor lock-in limited architectural flexibility and reduced control over long-term infrastructure decisions. At the same time, Linkser needed to modernize its virtualization platform without impacting the continuous 24/7 availability requirements of its mission-critical payment-processing environment.

As these limitations became more evident, Linkser required a more flexible and cost-efficient virtualization approach that could support long-term scalability while eliminating vendor dependency. Proxmox VE became the clear choice, delivering the open-source flexibility, enterprise-grade reliability, and scalable infrastructure management required to move forward.

A controlled path from VMware to Proxmox VE

Together with Proxmox partner GWS, Linkser implemented a dual-site infrastructure based on Proxmox VE to support both production workloads and disaster recovery requirements. The architecture gives Linkser a more resilient foundation for its payment-processing services while increasing flexibility and control over future infrastructure growth.

The primary data center runs on a 4-node Proxmox VE cluster with Ceph distributed storage and hosts more than 50 VMs for mission-critical payment-processing workloads. The disaster recovery site is based on a blade chassis with 4 compute nodes and external enterprise storage, providing additional capacity for more than 70 VMs.

To reduce migration risk, GWS designed a controlled migration approach centered around a temporary Proxmox Virtual Environment pivot cluster. This cluster was connected to the existing VMware infrastructure, allowing workloads to be migrated in an isolated environment without directly affecting production systems. It also provided a rollback path to VMware during the transition phase.

In parallel, GWS used a dedicated lab environment to validate legacy workloads with specific boot requirements. This made it possible to identify compatibility issues early and apply the necessary hardware adjustments before moving critical systems into production.

The migration itself was carried out in staged batches based on workload criticality and defined maintenance windows. Replication and synchronization mechanisms helped maintain consistency up to the final cutover. As a result, Linkser completed the migration in under 30 days, with zero downtime for production services.

Key Outcomes: More Control at Lower Cost

The migration to Proxmox VE delivered immediate and measurable operational and financial outcomes for Linkser’s payment infrastructure:

• 60% lower licensing costs, improving long-term infrastructure cost efficiency
• No vendor lock-in, enabling full architectural independence and long-term control
• Increased operational flexibility in managing virtualization resources and workload allocation
• Strengthened support model, combining the expertise from GWS (L1/L2) and Proxmox Server Solutions (L3) for end-to-end coverage
• A scalable and highly available platform for mission-critical payment-processing workloads

Built to Scale: A Future-Ready Foundation

With Proxmox Virtual Environment, Linkser has established a modern and independent virtualization foundation for its payment-processing services. The platform gives the company the flexibility to expand infrastructure capacity as demand grows, while maintaining control over long-term architecture and operational planning.

The project also shows that even highly critical financial environments can move to an open-source virtualization platform without compromising service availability, provided the migration is carefully planned, tested, and supported by the right expertise. For Linkser, Proxmox VE now provides a scalable foundation for continued growth in Bolivia’s digital payments market.

Roberto Soliz

National IT Manager

About Linkser

Linkser is one of Bolivia’s largest card-management and payment-processing companies, and a key player in the country’s digital payments industry. Linkser is responsible for managing payment services for Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and multiple financial institutions. Its infrastructure forms the backbone of payment operations, requiring continuous 24/7 availability, high security, and rapid transaction response times.

About GWS – Global Web Solutions
GWS is a Bolivian company specializing in business continuity solutions, infrastructure, virtualization, security, and data-center services. With extensive experience migrating customers from VMware to efficient open-source technologies like Proxmox VE, GWS has become a trusted partner for organizations that require maximum availability, local expertise, and proven enterprise-grade solutions.