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Live Migration from VMware to Proxmox: How People Are Making It Work Smoothly
Virtualization is pretty much the backbone of modern IT, and as businesses grow or pivot, so does the tech stack. More and more people are looking at Proxmox VE — the open-source powerhouse — as a serious alternative to VMware. It’s flexible, cost-effective, and gets the job done without tying you into a pricey ecosystem. But let’s be real: migrating from VMware, especially with live VMs, feels like defusing a bomb. Zero downtime? It’s the dream. But it takes some clever planning. Thankfully, the IT community has been doing some solid experimenting, and a few smart strategies have emerged to make the leap smoother.
Why Live Migration Is the Holy Grail
Moving a VM while it’s still running — with barely a hiccup? That’s the goal. For businesses running important workloads, every second counts. Ideally, you want to pre-seed most of the data to the new platform, then sync the final changes just before switching over. That way, downtime is almost negligible.
There’s been chatter about tools like migratekit (used for OpenStack) being the gold standard. Proxmox has something similar, but it streams the entire disk in real-time, which can really hammer your IO if the server is beefy. So what’s working for folks in the trenches? Let’s break down the top…
