Introduction

In an increasingly digitalized business environment, efficiency and cost reduction are key priorities. Grupo Logístico Ibérico, a leading company in the logistics sector with a presence throughout the peninsula, faced a common challenge: an outdated IT infrastructure with underutilized physical servers, high maintenance costs, and limited scalability. The solution came with virtualization using Proxmox, an open-source platform that has completely transformed its operations.

The challenge: Fragmented infrastructure and high costs

Before virtualization, Grupo Logístico Ibérico had more than 30 physical servers distributed across two data centers. Each server ran a single application, resulting in an average usage of 15% of its capacity. Energy, cooling, and maintenance costs skyrocketed, and implementing new services required weeks of provisioning. Additionally, the lack of redundancy put business continuity at risk.

The solution: Proxmox VE as the cornerstone of the transformation

After evaluating various alternatives, the IT team chose Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE), an open-source virtualization platform based on KVM and LXC. Proxmox offered an ideal combination of performance, flexibility, and cost, with support for high availability and live migration. The project was executed in phases:

• Phase 1: Analysis and planning. Workloads were inventoried and a cluster architecture with three Proxmox nodes was designed.
• Phase 2: Migration. The live migration tool was used to move virtual machines without interruptions.
• Phase 3: Optimization. Backup, monitoring, and load balancing policies were implemented.

Results: Efficiency, savings, and agility

Virtualization with Proxmox allowed Grupo Logístico Ibérico to reduce the number of physical servers from 30 to 6, with energy savings of 40% and a 60% decrease in maintenance costs. Provisioning capacity went from weeks to minutes, and integrated high availability ensured 99.9% uptime. Furthermore, integration with cloud solutions, such as those discussed in our article on Advanced solutions in Microsoft Azure, made it easy to extend the hybrid infrastructure.

Key benefits

• Cost reduction: Estimated annual savings of €120,000 in energy and hardware.
• Scalability: New virtual servers deployed in less than 10 minutes.
• Continuity: Live migration without downtime and automated disaster recovery.
• Flexibility: Support for LXC containers and KVM virtual machines on the same platform.

Lessons learned and next steps

The experience of Grupo Logístico Ibérico demonstrates that Proxmox is a mature and cost-effective alternative to proprietary solutions. The key to success lay in careful planning and team training. As a next step, the company plans to integrate Proxmox with automation and observability tools, following current IT trends. For more success stories, you can explore our Success Stories category.

Conclusion

Virtualization with Proxmox has allowed Grupo Logístico Ibérico to modernize its infrastructure, reduce costs, and gain agility. If your company is looking for a similar solution, do not hesitate to contact our experts. You may also be interested in our article on Business productivity with Microsoft 365, where we explore another facet of digital transformation in the same group.