The launch of the new version of Proxmox Virtual Environment 6.4 which is a specialized Linux distribution based on Debian GNU / Linux, intended for the implementation and maintenance of virtual servers using LXC and KVM and capable of acting as replacement products such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix Hypervisor.
This new version of Proxmox VE 6.4, is a version that arrives with few changes, but incorporates several important updates of which we can mention that the base of the system is moved to Debian 10.9, the Linux Kernel was updated to version 5.4, among other things.
For those unfamiliar with Proxmox VE, they should know whate this distribution provides the means to implement an industrial grade virtual server system with web-based management, designed to manage hundreds or even thousands of virtual machines. The distribution has built-in tools to organize backup of virtual environments and out-of-the-box support for clustering, including the ability to migrate virtual environments from one node to another without interrupting work.
Among the features of the web interface: support for a secure VNC console; role-based access control to all available objects (VM, storage, nodes, etc.); support for various authentication mechanisms (MS ADS, LDAP, Linux PAM, Proxmox VE authentication).
Main new features of Proxmox VE 6.4
As mentioned at the beginning, this new version of the distribution has been moved to the base of the Debian 10.9 package "Buster", together with which the Linux kernel 5.4 with the option to use version 5.11, LXC 4.0, QEMU 5.12, OpenZFS 2.0.4.
With the integration of Kernel 5.4 it will be possible to make use of the open exFAT driver developed by Samsung. Previously, it was not possible to add exFAT support to the kernel due to patents, but the situation changed after Microsoft released the publicly available specifications and allowed exFAT patents to be used for free on Linux.
As well as virtualization, from the »lockdown» module, which incorporated the patches supplied in the distributions, used to restrict the access of the root user to the kernel and block the UEFI Secure Boot bypass.
Regarding the changes that stand out in the distribution, we can find that added the ability to use stored unified backups in a single file to restore virtual machines and containers hosted on the Proxmox backup server.
As well as also introducing a live mode to restore copies Backup of virtual machines saved on the Proxmox backup server (allows VM activation before restoration is complete, which continues in the background).
On the other hand, the improved integration with the Ceph PG automatic scaling mechanism stands out, as well as the added support for the Ceph Octopus 15.2.11 and Ceph Nautilus 14.2.20 storages.
Of the other changes that stand out of this new version:
- Added the ability to attach a virtual machine to a specific version of QEMU.
- Added a new utility proxmox-file-restore.
- Improved cgroup v2 support for containers.
- Container templates based on Alpine Linux 3.13, Devuan 3, Fedora 34, and Ubuntu 21.04 have been added.
- Added the ability to save monitoring metrics in InfluxDB 1.8 and 2.0 using the HTTP API.
- The distribution installer has improved the configuration of ZFS partitions on outdated hardware without UEFI support.
- Added notifications about the ability to use CephFS, CIFS, and NFS to store backups.
Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it About this new version of the distribution, you can check the details in the announcement. The link is this.
Download and support Proxmox VE 6.4
Proxmox VE 6.4 is now available for download on its website official. The link is this. Distribution upgrades from Proxmox VE versions 4.x or 5.x to 6.x are possible with apt.
On the other hand, also this Proxmox Server Solutions offers business support starting at € 80 per year per processor.