More than 10 years of scalable public infrastructure with Proxmox VE
Since 2014, Marche Region has relied on Proxmox Virtual Environment to operate a large-scale virtualization environment for regional administration and healthcare services. What began with testing and pilot deployments in 2013 has grown into a distributed infrastructure with more than 60 physical nodes, 5 clusters, Proxmox Backup Server, Ceph, SAN storage, and dedicated disaster recovery sites.
Marche Region is a public administration organization based in Ancona, Italy. Its IT infrastructure supports regional services and healthcare-related workloads that require stability, scalability, and long-term operational control. For public institutions, infrastructure decisions affect cost predictability, service continuity, data protection, and the ability to modernize digital services over many years. Marche Region needs a virtualization platform that grows with these requirements while reducing dependency on proprietary licensing models.
More control, less licensing pressure
Before adopting Proxmox VE, Marche Region operated virtualization workloads on a VMware-based environment running on blade systems from IBM and HPE with x86 AMD processors. As the infrastructure continued to grow, the organization needed to reduce cost pressure and improve budget flexibility.
The team evaluated open-source alternatives, including oVirt, Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager, and Proxmox VE. Beyond cost efficiency, Marche Region values a platform that supports internal know-how, flexible operations, and long-term infrastructure development.
Proxmox VE supports these requirements with its Debian-based architecture, integrated virtualization stack, RESTful API, open-source model, and a subscription model designed for predictable infrastructure costs. These factors help the organization shift the focus from licensing constraints to operational knowledge and infrastructure control.
Virtualization across services and sites
Marche Region began testing Proxmox VE in 2013 and moved regional services into production during 2014. Since then, the organization has continuously expanded and upgraded the platform from Proxmox VE version 3 to version 9.
Today, the infrastructure runs more than 1,300 active virtual systems. Most use KVM full virtualization for complex database management systems and institutional services. Approximately 10 to 15 percent use LXC containers, mainly for internal microservices.
The current environment consists of 5 clusters. Two clusters run in the Marche Region data center in Ancona and support healthcare and regional services across 3 PODs. One disaster recovery cluster in Perugia uses Ceph-based hyperconverged nodes alongside Fibre Channel SAN storage. Another disaster recovery cluster in Terni uses Ceph-based hyperconverged nodes alongside HPE Fibre Channel storage. Marche Region is also implementing an additional POD at one of its Ancona sites, using hyperconverged nodes, HPE SAN, and Qumulo storage.
This architecture gives the organization a flexible foundation for different workload profiles. It combines full virtualization, containers, hyperconverged storage, enterprise SAN resources, and dedicated backup and disaster recovery capabilities.
High availability, backup, and disaster recovery
Marche Region uses Proxmox VE to run databases, Kubernetes environments, proxy systems, application servers, and other institutional services. Business-critical workloads include Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server systems.
Marche Region manages high availability through the integrated HA capabilities of Proxmox VE. The backup architecture uses Proxmox Backup Server and native tools to automate backups and benefit from deduplication. Marche Region replicates backups across different PODs within the Ancona data center and to disaster recovery sites through Proxmox Backup Server remotes.
The current disaster recovery concept uses scheduled asynchronous replication between sites. This setup helps protect workloads across multiple locations and supports the operational requirements of regional administration and healthcare services. The partner Tecnosistemi Marche S.r.l. has supported Marche Region from the first installation and contributes to deployment, support, and the development of internal know-how.
Lower costs, greater infrastructure flexibility
With Proxmox VE, Marche Region has gained a virtualization platform that combines cost efficiency with technical flexibility. The organization reports an 80 to 90 percent reduction in licensing expenses compared with proprietary alternatives. This has allowed Marche Region to reinvest budget into hardware modernization instead of allocating it primarily to software licensing.
The unified web-based interface simplifies administration and accelerates the deployment of new environments. By combining KVM virtualization with Ceph-based hyperconvergence, Marche Region maximizes compute and storage resources, reduces physical footprint, and improves hardware efficiency.
Over more than a decade, Marche Region has built deep internal know-how and greater control over its systems, giving the organization more freedom to develop its infrastructure according to its long-term requirements.
Over time, we have found Proxmox VE to be a reliable, flexible platform that fully meets our needs. Today, it is the primary virtualization platform in our data center, enabling us to manage and evolve our infrastructure with great flexibility. Our choice of Proxmox VE should be viewed as part of a strategic approach to open source, transforming what would otherwise be licensing costs into investments aimed at developing skills and expertise within our local community.Massimo Casali, Head of Cloud – POSR (Polo Strategico Regionale), Cybersecurity and CSIRT, Regione Marche
From disaster recovery to active-active continuity
Marche Region plans to further develop its infrastructure with stretched clusters across sites and disaster recovery based on Ceph. This next step will move the environment from asynchronous disaster recovery toward a synchronous active-active business continuity model, with a single logical cluster spanning two separate physical data centers. The goal is to bring recovery time objective and recovery point objective close to zero and further improve service continuity across regional administration and healthcare workloads.
Massimo Casali Head of Cloud – POSR (Polo Strategico Regionale), Cybersecurity and CSIRT, Regione Marche
About Regione Marche Regione Marche is the regional public administration of Marche, Italy, headquartered in Ancona. The organization provides administrative and digital services for the Marche region and supports IT infrastructure for regional services and healthcare-related workloads.
About Tecnosistemi Marche S.r.l. Founded in 2003, Tecnosistemi Marche provides ICT infrastructure and services to businesses and public administrations, specializing in virtualization, storage, backup, networking, and security. Proxmox VE is central to its open-source virtualization expertise and strategy. https://www.tecnosistemimarche.com/
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