Managing 50+ VMs in production

Deployment and management of more than 50 VMs for open source services and tools in production environments. Before: services scattered across physical servers with no standardization or automation.

Key metrics

Active VMs: 0 → 50-60
Uptime: no SLA → 99.5% / 99.9%
Services operated: 10-20
Incidents/month: 3-5

Key facts

Scope: 50-60 active VMs in production.
Services: email, VoIP, monitoring, collaboration, and internal management.
Goal: operational continuity, standardization, and sustained growth.

Stack

Proxmox
Linux
Open Source

Sanitized VM operations diagram

Proxmox cluster
Linux templates
Open source services
Zabbix monitoring

Logical view without VM names, domains, IPs, or customer data.

Context

The ISP needed to host a variety of open source services (email, VoIP, monitoring, collaboration, ticket management), but each one ran on dedicated physical servers or isolated VMs with no shared standards. Migrating to a standardized virtualized environment was critical for scalability and maintenance.

Actions

Provisioned 50-60 Linux VMs on the Proxmox cluster with standardized configurations.
Automated repetitive tasks (deploys, updates, backups) with scripts and cron.
Continuously supervised availability and performance, integrated with Zabbix.

Anonymized Proxmox panel with virtual machine inventory and resource status — Anonymized Proxmox inventory: day-to-day operation of VMs, resources, and run states.

Results

Consolidated 99.5%-99.9% uptime for critical services (previously unmeasured).
Incidents reduced to 3-5 per month: a stable environment with low operational friction.
An architecture ready to onboard new services without redesigning the infrastructure.