From steel to stability: Forging industrial strength with Proxmox VE
Big River Steel operates one of the most advanced steel mills in the United States. At its Osceola, Arkansas facility, more than 1,200 employees produce high-quality steel using electric arc furnace technology. A process that demands precision, uptime, and absolute reliability from every system involved.
Since its founding in 2014, Big River Steel has fused cutting-edge technology with sustainable steelmaking. To stay competitive and keep production running 24/7, the company also relies on virtualization to ensure its IT systems remain efficient, flexible, and secure. For years, Big River Steel relied on VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus with vSAN, later expanding with Dell’s VxRail to manage its virtualization lifecycle.
While these solutions supported initial growth, they also added complexity and higher costs. Over time, maintaining flexibility and stability became increasingly difficult as the environment grew more complex and dependent on proprietary systems.
Moving beyond vendor lock-in
The uncertainty triggered by Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware made these challenges impossible to ignore. Vendor lock-in, rigid licensing, and escalating costs had become unacceptable for a company that values resilience. Big River Steel needed a future-proof alternative that offered transparency, flexibility, and long-term control over their virtualization environment.
After evaluating several options, the engineering team found Proxmox VE to be the ideal fit. Its open-source foundation, seamless integration with Ceph, and straightforward management tools aligned perfectly with the company’s goal of reducing complexity while maintaining enterprise-grade performance. Supported by responsive vendor assistance and official Proxmox VE training, the team gained the confidence to adopt best practices and manage the new environment independently.
Migrating with confidence
Big River Steel migrated 4 clusters, each with 3 nodes, from VMware to Proxmox VE. Thanks to careful planning and hands-on training, the transition was smooth and without disruption.
Before the migration, Big River Steel operated two 3-node clusters based on Dell PowerEdge R740XD nodes and two additional 3-node clusters based on Dell VxRail P670F systems. The previous VMware setup was configured with vSAN, combining SSDs, NVMe drives, and spinning disks connected through multiple 25GbE uplinks.
“We are extremely pleased with Proxmox VE,” said Brian Clark, Meltshop/PD Automation Engineer III at Big River Steel. “The seamless integration with Ceph was a real game changer for us and gave us the flexibility and scalability we needed without the high licensing costs of vSAN.”
After moving to Proxmox VE with Ceph, the company restructured its storage architecture with dedicated SSD, NVMe, and standard Ceph pools, as well as CephFS for ISO images and templates. This modernized setup delivers higher performance, greater flexibility, and a more predictable infrastructure that supports Big River Steel’s continuous operations.
The new environment quickly proved its value. Mission-critical systems now run on a more resilient and efficient backbone, ensuring that plant operations remain secure, stable, and future-ready.
Tangible improvements in daily operations
The shift to Proxmox VE fundamentally reshaped Big River Steel’s IT operations. Systems now run with greater stability and performance, freeing engineers from constant firefighting and allowing them to focus on innovation and process improvement.
Support from Proxmox has been excellent, and the training classes really helped us get our solution going. We would highly recommend Proxmox products for industrial customers.Brian Clark, Meltshop/PD Automation Engineer III
Future-proofing with Proxmox Datacenter Manager
Big River Steel uses Proxmox Datacenter Manager to optimize the management of its virtualized infrastructure and gain a comprehensive overview of all virtualization clusters. The team is impressed by the solution's intuitive user interface and powerful features. Brian Clark emphasizes in particular how well it integrates into their operations.
This strategic use of Proxmox Datacenter Manager ensures that Big River Steel continues to build an IT foundation that is scalable, reliable, and future-ready, reflecting the same strength and precision as the steel it produces.
Brian Clark Meltshop/PD Automation Engineer III
About Big River Steel, LLC
Big River Steel, founded in 2014 and headquartered in Osceola, Arkansas, produces high-quality steel with electric arc furnace technology. Around 1,200 employees support the company’s focus on innovation and sustainable production.
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