Five months after version 8.0, the Vienna-based Proxmox Solutions GmbH released its Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) 8.1. It is based on the current Debian 12.2 “Bookworm” and uses kernel 6.5 (in 8.0: 6.2). The core technologies from the open source area have been updated: QEMU is now in version 8.1.2, but LXC is still available as version 5.0.2.
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According to the Proxmox roadmap, OpenZFS 2.2.0 has already been released three important bug fixes Mistake. FreeBSD also had to contend with a bug in OpenZFS 2.2 during the recent release of version 14. To prevent problems caused by the “block cloning bug”, administrators should definitely read the release notes for OpenZFS (currently 2.2.1). on GitHub and the Proxmox forum with that Thread about the 8.1 release track.
Secure boot VMs now possible
The signed shim bootloader included in Proxmox VE 8.1 should run most UEFI implementations that want or need to use Secure Boot. All components in the boot chain are available in variants signed by Proxmox. How to convert an existing Proxmox VE installation to the new environment is shown the Proxmox documentation under “Secure Boot”.
Software-defined networking (SDN) was previously offered as “experimental” in Proxmox VE. Since version 8.1, SDN is one of the officially supported technologies. With SDN capabilities, network administrators can create virtual zones and networks (VNets) to manage complex network configurations and multitenancy setups directly from the web interface. As a tech preview, there is a DHCP plugin for IP address management (IPAM) to be able to assign IPs to virtual guests in “Simple Zones”. In this context, it is interesting that Proxmox Server Solution GmbH has received an official Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) (BC:24:11:xx:xx:xx) from the IEEE, which is now also used as a standard MAC prefix for virtual guests is used.
Ceph “Reef” and more
For a new installation, Proxmox VE 8.1 uses the new Ceph “Reef” 18.2.0 with optimized default settings as a storage solution; Ceph “Quincy” 17.2.7 is also supported.
The new and more flexible notification system no longer only sends notifications via the local Postfix MTA, but can also do this via authenticated SMTP or via a Gotify instance. Message routing with match-based rules can decide which destinations receive notifications about which events.
The many other improvements and innovations as well as possible problems when upgrading from version 8.0 to 8.1 are in the Proxmox roadmap documented in detail. The project is available as open source software now available for download ready and can be used free of charge. Access to the enterprise repository is available from 105 euros (net) per year, professional support costs between 325 and 980 euros (net) per year per CPU socket.
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