Farmácia Nova da Maia achieves High Availability with Proxmox VE and ZFS

When the Portuguese online pharmacy Farmácia Nova da Maia faced challenges with its previous hypervisor environment, a new solution based on Proxmox VE, ZFS, and Proxmox Backup Server significantly improved both online and internal performance, ensuring seamless operations and efficient data management.

Farmácia Nova da Maia is the most visited and a highly respected online pharmacy in Portugal. Since its inception, the pharmacy has invested in technology, choosing open-source solutions wherever possible.

Rapid growth and the need for high performance

The company’s rapid growth over the years required an overhaul of its IT server infrastructure. The pharmacy had previously operated in a different hypervisor environment, but as costs increased, it became clear that a new solution was necessary. The goal was clear: to achieve superior performance, high availability (HA), flexibility, and cost-effectiveness, all while remaining aligned with the company’s commitment to technological innovation.

The pharmacy’s IT manager F. Moreira explains: “Our vision has always been to offer not only high-quality products and services to our customers but also a truly positive experience for our employees. Technology has always been a central pillar of our operations, driving our continuous growth. We needed a solution that could meet this challenge by providing exceptional performance while also being highly cost-efficient.”

High availability with Proxmox VE and ZFS

To improve performance and reliability, Farmácia Nova da Maia implemented a two-node Proxmox VE cluster, with one QDevice, running on brand-new HPE servers equipped with state-of-the-art NVMe PCIe 5.0 drives. ZFS is used for storage replication between the nodes. This approach, which eliminates the need for centralized storage, was chosen for its cost-effectiveness, good performance, and to avoid over-engineering.

Additionally, to protect data and ensure rapid recovery in case of failure, the pharmacy deploys Proxmox Backup Server with an offsite backup plan.

The ZFS replication between the nodes takes place over a 50 Gbps network, with some virtual machines being replicated every 5 minutes. This minimizes data loss in case of catastrophic failure and ensures compliance with the company’s HA and business continuity policies.

“We opted for a flexible, scalable, and easy-to-manage solution. The combination of Proxmox VE, ZFS, and Proxmox Backup Server has been crucial in ensuring we have a robust IT infrastructure to support our operations,” says F. Moreira.

Business continuity and data protection

The implementation of Proxmox VE and Proxmox Backup Server has significantly improved Farmácia Nova da Maia’s performance, both for online customers and internal operations, ensuring seamless operations and efficient data management. The ZFS replication between nodes, combined with the high-speed 50 Gbps network, guarantees business continuity and the protection of critical data—an essential feature for a pharmacy managing large volumes of online transactions and serving a global customer base.

F. Moreira
IT-Manager

About Farmácia Nova da Maia
Founded in 2015, Farmácia Nova da Maia is the most visited and a highly respected online pharmacy in Portugal, distinguished by its departure from the traditional pharmacy model in the country. Since its inception, the pharmacy has invested in technology, choosing open-source solutions wherever possible. This approach has been a key factor in its continuous growth and success. Today, it is the most visited Portuguese pharmacy worldwide, serving customers globally. Its technological strategy has positioned it ahead of Portuguese competitors.