Virtualisation is the foundation of most company server rooms. For years, in the SME segment the default choice was VMware. The licensing changes introduced by Broadcom have led companies to ask about alternatives en masse, and Proxmox has become the most frequently considered option. It is worth comparing the two solutions coolly, because there is no single right answer for everyone here.

Two different licensing models

The biggest difference today is about money, not technology.

  • VMware, after the Broadcom changes, is sold mainly on a subscription model, in bundles and billed per CPU core. For many smaller companies this meant a step increase in costs and the disappearance of the cheaper editions they knew before.
  • Proxmox is open software. You can use it without a licence fee, and you pay optionally for a support subscription and access to a stable update repository.

For a company with a few servers, the difference in annual costs can be several times over. That is why the topic returned with such force.

The features that are actually used

VMware has a very mature ecosystem and a long list of advanced features. The question is how many of them an SME actually uses.

Proxmox covers most everyday needs:

  • clustering of multiple nodes and live migration of machines between them,
  • high availability, meaning automatic relocation of machines after a node failure,
  • built-in support for backups and integration with Proxmox Backup Server,
  • containerisation and full virtual machines in a single tool,
  • data replication between nodes.

VMware wins where very large, complex environments and mature fleet management tools matter, where there is deep integration with storage vendors’ solutions, and where certifications required by some vendor systems are needed.

In practice I most often come across environments where a company paid for VMware as if for the enterprise version, but used features that Proxmox handles without a problem. Migration does not always make sense, but the calculation itself is worth doing at least once a year.

Support and skills

This is an often overlooked but crucial element of the decision.

  • VMware has a huge base of specialists, documentation and partners. It is easier to find an administrator who knows this environment.
  • Proxmox requires a team or partner who knows Linux and the mechanisms underneath well. Vendor support is available, but much depends on the competence of whoever runs it.

If a company has no in-house skills, the choice of hypervisor is really the choice of the partner who will look after it.

When to choose Proxmox

Proxmox will be a good choice when:

  1. the cost of a VMware licence has become hard to accept,
  2. the environment counts from a few to a dozen or so servers,
  3. the company uses standard virtualisation features, without exotic integrations,
  4. there is a team or partner who knows Linux and is ready to look after the platform,
  5. you care about a consistent backup solution together with virtualisation.

When to stay with VMware

VMware still makes sense when:

  • the environment is very large and heavily integrated with the vendor’s ecosystem,
  • a specific vendor system requires a certified platform,
  • the company has a team trained in VMware and migration would generate high risk,
  • you use advanced features whose replacements would be costly to deploy.

Changing platform for the sake of change rarely pays off. The decision should follow from a calculation of costs and risk, not from fashion.

Backup and migration are part of the same decision

When choosing a platform, do not look only at the hypervisor itself. A virtual environment is also the way copies are made and the plan for moving machines.

  • Proxmox integrates with a dedicated backup server that makes incremental copies at block level and deduplicates data. For many companies this is an argument as important as the licence cost.
  • VMware has a rich choice of third-party backup tools, but this is usually another paid layer.

The same goes for migration. Moving from VMware to Proxmox is a project in which machines are converted to the new format, tested and switched over in stages. Done methodically, it happens without long downtime, but it is not a one-evening operation.

Risks worth keeping in mind

  • Migrating a large environment without tests can reveal problems with drivers and disk performance.
  • A lack of in-house skills with Proxmox means full dependence on a partner. This is not a flaw, but it has to be consciously planned for.
  • Keeping VMware purely out of habit, despite rising costs, is a decision worth verifying with numbers every year.

How to approach the decision

  1. Calculate the real annual cost of your current VMware licence after the latest changes.
  2. List the features you genuinely use, and check which ones Proxmox covers.
  3. Assess the team’s skills or the availability of a partner.
  4. Plan the migration as a project with tests, not as an operation on production in a single weekend.

A virtualisation migration touches the heart of the infrastructure, so it is worth doing methodically. If you are considering a move to an open platform, see how we deliver Proxmox virtualisation and server migration. I will help calculate the costs of both variants and assess whether migration genuinely pays off in your case.