Infrastructure · Virtualisation · Migrations
Have virtualisation licences become much more expensive? The move does not have to be a leap into the unknown. From VMware vSphere (ESXi) we migrate by native import, from Hyper-V and XCP-ng through disk import — always to Proxmox VE a in stages — and we will calculate how much the move actually saves before you make your decision.
Proxmox VE is an open-source platform with no licence fees for virtualisation; we handle backup via Proxmox Backup Server or Veeam, and we will train your team as a Proxmox Training Partner. On the page you will also find the migration carried out.
After the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom the way it is sold changed: licensing moved to a subscription, the processor core became the unit of pricing and individual products were combined into bundles. Organisations that had run reliably on vSphere/ESXi for years therefore saw their costs rise on contract renewal — without any added value.
Three changes that caused it:
In December 2023 Broadcom stopped selling perpetual licences and support for them. A licence you have already bought stays yours, but new ones are sold only as a subscription — a one-off cost has become a recurring commitment.
recovery · recurring cost
The more powerful the processor you buy, the higher the licence — even though it is a single server. Upgrading the hardware thus penalises itself with a higher fee.
per core · grows with performance
Features that used to be bought separately are now part of larger bundles. You also pay for what you do not use — and a smaller environment loses the most by it.
packages · extra features
The answer is usually Proxmox VE: an open-source platform for virtual machines (KVM) and containers (LXC), with clusters, high availability and integrated backup — with no licence fee for the hypervisor. What replaces the individual parts of vSphere in it is set out in the following table.
The question when moving is not "does Proxmox have everything?", but "what in it does the job that vCenter or vSAN does today". Here is the translation between the two worlds — including one thing that works differently.
Management and availability
vCenter Server
Web interface of every node
The cluster has no master node — it can be managed from any of them.
vMotion
Live migration of machines
With shared storage, a running machine moves to another node with a pause of under one second.
vSphere HA
HA manager
If a node fails, the machines start up elsewhere by themselves — from three nodes upwards and with shared storage.
Storage and backups
VMFS · vSAN
ZFS and Ceph
Or, further, your disk array over iSCSI or NFS.
Veeam · vSphere backups
Proxmox Backup Server
Incremental backups with deduplication. Veeam can back up Proxmox too.
Guests and networks
VMware Tools
QEMU guest agent and VirtIO drivers
The agent handles consistent backups and shutdown, VirtIO performance.
NSX · distributed networks
SDN with zones
VLAN, VXLAN and EVPN as well. The firewall is at machine level.
The rest of the assessment is about the applications, not about the hypervisor: whether their supplier supports them elsewhere too, what their licence terms are and whether anything is tied to a specific vSphere function. We go through this in the initial analysis — and if something does not belong on Proxmox, we will say so.
Proxmox VE · the manufacturer's official price list · per socket per year
120 € / year
370 € / year
550 € / year
1 100 € / year
1 100 € / year
for a standard dual-socket server at the level of Standard — regardless of how many cores the processor has.
It is not a discount or a special offer — it is a different way of charging. VMware is licensed per physical core, a minimum of 16 cores per processor, and the commercial editions are sold only as a subscription. Proxmox VE is licensed per occupied socket — the number of cores does not change the price and the whole price list is public:
Prices are the official Proxmox Server Solutions price list (per socket per year, as at August 2026); for a server with two sockets the amount is doubled. We do not give the comparison with VMware in numbers — Broadcom does not publish a price list and the price is negotiated individually. We can work out the difference from your renewal quotation.
A list of the machines, their dependencies and storage — and the essential part: which applications have vendor conditions and which can tolerate a short window.
How many nodes, what storage, how backup will run and what RTO and RPO the environment must meet. Only then does anything get moved.
Machines go in batches, in agreed windows. Every stage has a rollback plan and the original environment stays operational until the new batch is approved.
Documentation, training of the team and handover of operation with agreed priorities and response times.
We migrate gradually and under control: critical systems are moved in agreed windows and every stage has a rollback plan. The move or the integration of backup is always part of it.
The most common concern before a migration is not technical but organisational: whether it can be done without operation stopping. It can — if it is done in batches and the original environment is shut down only after handover.
Public sector · Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute
Revitalisation of the environment including moving backup to Proxmox Backup Server — not just transferring the machines, but also what protects them.
Proxmox VE · Certified training
We run the courses according to the official Proxmox Server Solutions syllabus, at the GOPAS training centre in Bratislava. The courses are led by our Proxmox certified trainer from Qintec a.s., each participant works in their own lab environment and on completion receives a Certificate of Completion from Proxmox Server Solutions.
Migration, delivery of the environment and training of the team from a single supplier: We deploy, migrate and provide training in Proxmox VE — so on the course you get experience from production migrations, not theory from the documentation.
Infrastructure · Migrations
Send us a brief description of the environment (number of hosts and VMs, storage, backup) — we will come back with an initial assessment and a proposed approach.
E-mail: qintec@qintec.sk · Phone: +421 2 3240 1217 (working days 9:00 – 15:30)