Find out how Made4it transformed a total failure scenario into a modern, resilient and cheaper infrastructure.

16/09/2025 – By Made4it

The scene is familiar to any IT manager: end of the month, bills to be issued, system running… until everything crashes. This is exactly what happened to Pontonet, when a simultaneous failure in a physical server put the entire business at risk. Stop and think: if all your disks crashed today, how much would it cost to recover a whole year’s worth of information? That’s when Made4it stepped in to turn disaster into opportunity.

The problem: simultaneous failure and no backup

  • Three disks, one fate: Pontonet was running its critical ERP on a VM with free VMware, but all the server’s disks collapsed at the same time.
  • Outdated backup: the only backup was a year late, which meant losing customers, registrations and collections.
  • Company in the dark: without access to the ERP, Pontonet couldn’t issue invoices or bill its subscribers at the end of the month.

This is the kind of risk that many companies ignore until it’s too late.

Solutions on the table: keep VMware or migrate?

Faced with the disaster, we evaluated two alternatives:

Continue to VMware

  • Paid licensing for high availability (HA) amounted to R$ 20-30 thousand in licenses alone.
  • Need for additional backup tools (such as Veeam), further increasing the cost.
  • After the acquisition of VMware by Broadcom, licenses became more expensive and complex.

Migrate to Proxmox

  • Open source software, no license fees.
  • High availability cluster and native backup via Proxmox Backup Server.
  • Possibility of investing the money in better hardware instead of paying for licenses.
  • Infrastructure plan with 2 failover servers to keep the ERP active and 1 server dedicated to backup, guaranteeing real redundancy.

Migrate to Proxmox

Proxmox is more than a free alternative. It offers:

  • Native HA: with the cluster, if one server goes down, another automatically takes over without interruption.
  • Integrated backup: snapshots and incremental backups without the need for external software.
  • Flexibility and community: constant updates and a large user base.
  • Freedom of reinvestment: the amounts that would have been spent on licenses could be directed towards faster SSD disks and greater storage capacity.

When compared to VMware, Proxmox has proven to be more agile, economical and secure.

Made4it’s role in this turnaround

Pontonet was already a client of Made4it’s networks and servers. When the failure occurred, we took the following actions:

  • Emergency recovery: our experts exploited the robustness of VMware to recover the ERP, even with damaged disks.
  • Strategic analysis: we show the client the risk of following the same model and present the hidden costs of licensing.
  • Migration planning: we designed a new topology with Proxmox and dedicated backup, anticipating future growth.
  • Implementation without downtime: we migrate the virtual machines, configure the cluster and validate the backups, all with minimal downtime windows.

This process demonstrated our technical mastery and ability to turn crises into opportunities for innovation.

Results: safety and savings

After the migration:

  • Pontonet has achieved a resilient and highly available environment.
  • The investment was directed towards cutting-edge hardware, reducing operating costs.
  • Backups are run daily and tested periodically, preventing new scares.
  • ERP performance has improved thanks to faster disks and cluster load balancing.
  • The company now feels safe to scale its services, relying on the well-planned infrastructure.

Proxmox and Made4it: the winning combination

This story shows that technology and strategy go hand in hand. There’s no point in investing in expensive licenses if the project doesn’t include redundancy and backup; likewise, an open source solution requires expertise to be applied safely. Made4it delivers both: in-depth knowledge and affordable solutions.

Do you know someone who still relies on an old server with no backup? Send them this article!

And if you don’t want to be shocked to discover that your company is vulnerable, talk to our experts.