Mission 03
Proxmox / Ceph HA Platform
Enterprise-grade virtualization on bare metal, without the VMware tax.
VMware licensing changes pushed a lot of teams to look for alternatives. Proxmox is the answer, but a Proxmox cluster that survives real failure scenarios needs proper Ceph design, network segmentation, quorum tuning, and automated provisioning.
I deployed 100+ Proxmox nodes with PXE automation across every storage backend: ZFS, NFS, SAN, NVMe over Fabric, and Ceph. I led vSphere-to-Proxmox migrations (Pure Storage SAN, NVMe-oF, MultipathD), Proxmox 4-to-8 upgrades with near-zero downtime using NFS buffer, and designed HA architectures with LACP/EVPN/VPC.
This mission brings that operational depth to your deployment.
What's included
- Architecture design: cluster sizing, Ceph topology (replication/erasure coding), network plane separation, LACP/EVPN/VPC
- Proxmox cluster setup: Corosync configuration, quorum tuning, live migration, HA groups and fencing
- Storage backends: ZFS, NFS, SAN, NVMe over Fabric, Ceph (managed by Proxmox or cephadm)
- PXE automation: bare-metal provisioning pipeline for rapid node deployment and replacement
- Backup strategy: Proxmox Backup Server integration, snapshot scheduling, off-site replication
- Migration execution: planned VM migration from vSphere with minimal downtime, or Proxmox version upgrades
Deliverables
- Production Proxmox HA cluster with verified failover testing
- PXE boot infrastructure for zero-touch node provisioning
- Documented network architecture with VLAN map and switch configuration
- Backup and recovery runbook with tested restore procedures
- Storage performance baseline report per backend (IOPS, throughput, latency)
- Operational runbook covering common maintenance and failure scenarios
Tech stack
ProxmoxCephPXEZFSNVMe-oFHAProxyCorosync