Infrastructure

Managed Proxmox Evaluation and Fit

Decide when Assistance-operated Proxmox is the right platform

Managed Proxmox evaluation and fit

Use Managed Proxmox when the important decision is not only "where do VMs run?" but "who operates the virtualization platform, backup workflow, monitoring, access, and change process on dedicated hardware?" The evaluation should produce an explicit platform decision, an operating boundary, and a list of risks that must be resolved before go-live.

Fit checklist#

QuestionGood fit signalReassess signal
Workload shapeExisting VM/LXC workloads, legacy systems, fixed-size internal services, CI dependencies, or steady production servicesHighly elastic workloads that need cloud-native managed services more than VM control
Hardware needDedicated physical hardware helps with cost, isolation, licensing, latency, or procurementNo clear reason to own or reserve physical capacity
Operations gapThe team wants Assistance to operate Proxmox, backups, monitoring, patching, and runbooksThe customer only needs ad-hoc advice or one-time installation
Migration complexityVMware, Hyper-V, bare metal, or unmanaged Proxmox workloads can be migrated in stagesApplications require major modernization before any infrastructure migration is useful
GovernanceCustomer owners can approve data, access, downtime, retention, and hardware/provider decisionsNo accountable approver for outages, access, restore acceptance, or risk tradeoffs

Compare platform choices#

OptionUse whenNotes
Managed ProxmoxVM/LXC workloads need Assistance-operated virtualization on dedicated physical hardwareBest when VM continuity and predictable capacity matter.
Managed KubernetesContainerized workloads need GitOps, ingress, policy, and platform add-onsBetter when application teams are ready to own manifests, releases, probes, and resource behavior.
Local Private CloudA broader private platform must run in a customer site, colocation, or private environmentManaged Proxmox can be one building block inside this model.
Customer cloud accountThe workload needs cloud regions, managed databases, elastic services, or customer-owned account controlsAssistance may still operate selected services inside the customer account when scoped.
Unmanaged ProxmoxA customer team wants full hands-on ownership and only occasional consultingAssistance does not become the day-2 operator unless an operations boundary is agreed.

Evaluation inputs#

Bring the following to the assessment:

  • current inventory: VM names, owners, guest OS versions, CPU/RAM/disk, network dependencies, criticality, and maintenance windows;
  • source platform: VMware, Hyper-V, bare metal, unmanaged Proxmox, cloud VMs, or another environment;
  • data requirements: classification, retention, encryption expectations, legal constraints, and application restore validation owner;
  • availability expectations: business impact, tolerated downtime, known single points of failure, support hours, and escalation contacts;
  • hardware and site model: existing servers, planned purchase, colocation, provider contract, network handoff, power, remote-management access, and warranty assumptions;
  • security and access: administrators, identity source, approval workflow, VPN/private access, firewall policy, and audit evidence needs;
  • migration constraints: cutover windows, rollback expectations, required tests, licensing dependencies, and customer acceptance criteria.

Decision record#

The evaluation should finish with a short decision record:

  1. selected platform and why;
  2. workloads in scope for the first phase;
  3. workloads explicitly out of scope;
  4. Assistance responsibilities;
  5. customer responsibilities;
  6. required hardware, network, backup, monitoring, and access decisions;
  7. migration approach, rollback expectations, and validation owner;
  8. support hours, severity definitions, and escalation contacts;
  9. unresolved risks or assumptions.

Next steps#