CASE STUDY  |  INFRASTRUCTURE MIGRATION

When VMware’s Price Tag Got Too High,
We Found a Better Way.

How a Vermont manufacturer escaped runaway virtualization costs by migrating to a modern Hyper-V platform, and they did it without missing a beat!

Industry: Manufacturing   Type: SAN + Server Infrastructure / VMware to Hyper-V Migration   Platform: HPE Nimble Alletra 5010H & HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11

Nobody budgets for a surprise. But when Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware and began restructuring licensing, businesses across the country opened their renewal invoices and felt the same thing: shock. For one Vermont-based manufacturer with years of VMware infrastructure under its belt, the numbers simply didn’t add up anymore.

The cost of staying the course had quietly become unsustainable. Something had to change.

A Licensing Model That No Longer Made Sense

This manufacturer had built a reliable virtualized environment over the years, this included servers, storage, and workloads all running on VMware. It worked. People trusted it. Nobody was in a rush to touch it.

Then Broadcom took over VMware, and the licensing landscape shifted dramatically. Costs climbed to a point where continuing on the same path wasn’t a matter of preference, it was a matter of fiscal responsibility. The question was no longer if they’d move off VMware, but when and how. That’s where JRC Technologies came in.

The goal wasn’t just to cut costs. It was to build something better. A platform that was faster, more supportable, and ready to grow with the business for years to come.

Building the Right Foundation

Before a single VM could move, the right infrastructure had to be in place. JRC designed a solution built around enterprise-grade HPE hardware, specifically selected for its performance, reliability, and long-term support.

At the core of the new environment: an HPE Nimble Alletra 5010H SAN array, loaded with 22TB of raw SAS storage and a 1.92TB flash cache bundle, networked at 25Gbps for fast, low-latency access. Paired with two HPE (Mellanox) SN2010M 25/100GbE switches, the storage fabric was built to handle serious workloads without breaking a sweat.

On the compute side, three new HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11 servers were brought in, each equipped with Intel Xeon Silver 4510 12-core processors, 256GB of RAM, dual 25GbE networking, and dual redundant power supplies. Windows Server 2025 Datacenter Edition was the OS of choice, along with two licenses of Microsoft SQL Server 2022 and user CALs to cover the full organization.

JRC assembled and pre-configured everything before delivery, the storage was provisioned, 25GbE network configured, Windows Failover Cluster stood up, and equipment staged before shipping. A JRC engineer was also on-site to support the transition.

INFRASTRUCTURE AT A GLANCE

SAN Array	HPE Nimble Alletra 5010H
Raw Storage	22TB SAS HDD + 1.92TB Flash Cache
SAN Networking	2× HPE SN2010M 25/100GbE Switches
Servers	3× HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen11
CPU (per server)	Intel Xeon Silver 4510, 12-Core @ 2.40GHz
RAM (per server)	256GB DDR5
Hypervisor	Windows Server 2025 Datacenter / Hyper-V
Cluster Type	Windows Failover Cluster
Database Platform	Microsoft SQL Server 2022
Support Coverage	3-Year HPE Tech Care + InfoSight on all equipment

---

When Things Got Complicated HPE Showed Up

No infrastructure project of this scale goes without at least one curveball. During deployment, a mispositioned SSD caused unexpected system issues that required the environment to be rebuilt. It was the kind of problem that can rattle confidence and to top it off timelines too.

But this is exactly why support contracts matter.

JRC had included a 3-year HPE Tech Care Essential support agreement with the Nimble SAN and servers. When the issue surfaced, the team engaged HPE Enterprise support directly. The response was fast. The engineers were knowledgeable. The problem was resolved cleanly.

For the client, watching HPE mobilize and respond with that level of speed and competence wasn’t just reassuring, it confirmed they’d invested in the right platform. Good support doesn’t just fix problems. It builds trust.

The rebuild was completed, the configuration was validated, and the migration moved forward. What could have been a project-defining setback became a testament to the value of enterprise-grade partnerships.

Everything Off VMware. Everything Running Better.

With the infrastructure stable, JRC assisted with migrating all workloads off VMware and onto the new Windows Hyper-V environment running atop the Failover Cluster. Virtual machines were transitioned cleanly, SQL workloads were migrated to the new SQL Server 2022 instance, and the environment was validated end to end.

The result: a modern, fully supported virtualization platform that the client owns and controls, with no recurring VMware licensing hanging over it.

Performance improved. The 25Gbps SAN fabric, all-enterprise compute, and DDR5 memory gave the environment headroom it hadn’t had before. And with 11 additional drive slots available in the Alletra 5010H and up to four expansion shelves supported, the infrastructure is ready to grow when the business does.

WHY THIS MATTERS

In Their Own Words

“We were in a time crunch to migrate off of VMWare, JRC came in to assist with the acquisition of hardware AND to help us migrate from VMWare to Hyper-V onto the new hardware. Joshua and team from JRC dedicated the time required to get us migrated with zero manufacturing downtime in our nearly 24/7 manufacturing environment. We could not have done it without JRC’s help and appreciate their dedicated service for this successful project.”

— IT Manager |  Vermont-Based Manufacturer