UC Acupuncture Centers: Scalable IT infrastructure for a distributed healthcare network
As a growing pain management and acupuncture network serving healthcare organizations across multiple locations, UC Acupuncture Centers replaced its VMware environment with 2 independent Proxmox VE HA clusters, backed by external SAN storage and Veeam backup. The new architecture provides predictable infrastructure costs as the organization adds client organizations and customer sites.
UC Acupuncture Centers is a Los Angeles-based pain management and acupuncture network and support organization founded in 2015. Rather than operating its own clinics, the organization delivers most of its care through licensed acupuncturists who provide services directly at customer sites, including senior living communities, assisted living facilities, rehabilitation centers, hospitals, clinics, and med spas.
To keep each customer environment separate and independently managed, UC Acupuncture Centers runs a dedicated virtual machine for each client organization it serves. Today, more than 75 production workloads run across 2 Proxmox Virtual Environment clusters.
Looking for room to grow
UC Acupuncture Centers' previous hypervisor charged per CPU core. Because the organization dedicates a separate VM to each client it serves, every new client increased the number of VMs, and therefore the licensing footprint, regardless of the actual capacity used. That worked against the company's own growth strategy right as it was expanding its customer network and winning new business.
Technically, the 75 VMs were pushing the existing hardware and hypervisor combination toward its performance limits, and I/O-intensive healthcare workloads were starting to feel it. Disaster recovery compounded the risk. Recovery windows that were longer than the team considered acceptable created additional business-continuity and data-recovery risk, while licensing costs kept increasing with expansion plans.
Two independent clusters, one predictable cost structure
Together with Proxmox Partner StoneFly, UC Acupuncture Centers replaced the VMware environment with 2 independently managed Proxmox VE clusters deployed across 2 sites. Rather than 1 cluster spanning both locations, the environment runs as 2 separately managed Proxmox VE clusters on separate hardware at the primary and secondary sites, providing clear physical and operational separation between production and recovery.
Primary site: a 2-node Proxmox VE HA cluster with an external QDevice witness, hosting all 75 production VMs. Shared storage runs on an external SAN platform over iSCSI, with dedicated NVMe volumes for the most demanding workloads and tiered storage for everything else.
Secondary site: an isolated 2-node Proxmox VE HA cluster with its own witness, backed by hard-drive storage, serving purely as failover and recovery.
Backup: a 5th physical node at the primary site dedicated to backup, running Veeam alongside StoneFly's immutable storage.
4 layers of disaster recovery:
Local immutable backups: 1-week retention
Off-site immutable backup: replicated to the secondary site with a 4-month archive
Asynchronous storage replication: block-level replication of volume snapshots for rapid recovery of critical workloads
Automated failover: recovery workflows that reduce manual intervention
The team migrated all 75 production VMs from VMware in about 2 days, sequencing lower-priority workloads first and critical systems last. Proxmox Partner StoneFly handled sizing, delivery, and configuration end to end, with the UC Acupuncture Centers IT team involved throughout to take over day-to-day management. From initial sizing to a production-ready cluster took about 2 weeks; on-site implementation took 2 days.
By pairing Proxmox VE’s flexibility with external SAN storage, we got an environment that was sized perfectly for our budget. StoneFly didn't just set it up. They trained our team so we can manage Proxmox VE ourselves.Ghassan Safieh, Director of IT at UC Acupuncture Centers
Proxmox Virtual Environment's open-source model eliminated the per-core licensing model that had driven costs in the previous VMware environment, while commercial enterprise support remains available through a subscription model – a structural fit, not just a lower bill, for a business where every new account means another workload.
Since replacing VMware with Proxmox Virtual Environment, UC Acupuncture Centers has seen measurable gains in both infrastructure performance and cost predictability.
Technical Metrics
All 75 production VMs migrated from VMware in approximately 2 days, with minimal downtime
Recovery times under 10 minutes for critical workloads
2 independently managed HA clusters – one for production and one for DR – with 2 nodes each, plus 1 dedicated backup node
Business Outcomes
Total software, maintenance, and support costs down by up to 70% versus the previous environment
Infrastructure costs now scale more predictably as the organization adds new clients
IT budget freed up to support continued expansion
A platform built to grow with the business
The migration moved all 75 production VMs off VMware in about 2 days with minimal downtime, and critical workloads now recover in under 10 minutes.
"For a healthcare environment, that alone was a big deal," said Safieh. "It's given us a platform we can actually scale with, and made growth budget-friendly and feasible."
UC Acupuncture Centers is planning a 10 Gb/s inter-site connection with sub-3-millisecond latency, with the goal of enabling synchronous storage replication and ultimately achieving a zero-RPO recovery architecture.
Ghassan Safieh Director of IT, UC Acupuncture Centers
About UC Acupuncture Centers Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Los Angeles, CA UC Acupuncture Centers is a pain management and acupuncture network and support organization, delivering care on-site at hospitals, senior living communities, rehabilitation facilities, and other partner locations across the United States. Learn more: https://ucacupuncture.com/
About Proxmox Partner Stonefly StoneFly delivers end-to-end Proxmox solutions (deployment, management, and migration) backed by 20+ years in enterprise storage, hyperconverged infrastructure, backup and disaster recovery, and cybersecurity. Trusted by over 10,000 businesses and government agencies, StoneFly pairs Proxmox with enterprise storage and DR appliances for secure, cost-effective infrastructure. Learn more: https://stonefly.com/
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