In a highly competitive sector such as real estate, having a reliable IT infrastructure is not an option: it is a strategic necessity. This is the case for Ginvest, a real estate holding company with a consolidated turnover of €77 million, which has chosen to adopt an advanced virtualization solution to support its growth and digital transformation. Leading this transformation was AXOL Server, a Proxmox-certified partner, which designed and implemented a high-availability hyperconverged server cluster, tailored to the client’s needs.
The requirements of the real estate holding company
Until recently, Ginvest’s IT infrastructure was based on a traditional server configuration, which was no longer capable of supporting the growing volume of documents, digital services, and expectations regarding business continuity. Added to this was a significant problem: the end of software support from the vendor and the difficulty of sourcing hardware components for maintenance.
As Enrico Ravazzani, Head of Information Systems at Ginvest, explains: “We needed a flexible, scalable, and centralized system capable of ensuring business continuity and maximum autonomy for our IT team. The decision to virtualize had become inevitable.”
The Proxmox and Ceph solution
At the heart of the new infrastructure is a high-availability three-node server cluster based on Proxmox VE, with Proxmox Backup Server running on a separate physical server for centralized backup management. This configuration enables automatic failover, data redundancy, and more streamlined resource management.
A concrete example of effective and affordable virtualization, which has enabled Ginvest to consolidate servers, enhance security, and improve future scalability without resorting to expensive or proprietary solutions. The cluster now hosts the company’s core services, including domain controllers, file servers, internal business management systems, document management systems, and web servers.
A tailored project, carried out without any downtime
AXOL Server managed every stage of the project, from the initial consultation through to deployment. The work was carried out without any downtime thanks to meticulous planning, ensuring that office operations were not disrupted. The migration was completed quickly, ensuring a smooth transition to the new virtualized environment.
The benefits achieved
- High reliability of critical systems
- Automated backups and drastically reduced recovery times
- Greater autonomy for the in-house IT team
- Lower costs compared to equivalent solutions offered by enterprise vendors.
The infrastructure is already designed for future expansion and the integration of additional services, such as secure document sharing with clients and real estate agencies.
The full interview
The interview, published in Digital 4 (read the full interview here), provides a detailed account of the high-availability server cluster infrastructure implemented by AXOL Server for Ginvest, the real estate holding company that needed to ensure scalability and resilience.
