Proxmox VE 8.1 is out. The update to the popular virtualization platform has many of the normal “under-the-hood” updates as well as several new features. We wanted to take a quick moment to show some of the new features to our readers since they are a big deal.
Proxmox VE 8.1 Released with New Features
There are some big new features such as supporting Secure Boot, updates to OpenZFS 2.2.0, Linux Kernel 6.5, and so forth. By far, the biggest update to Proxmox VE 8.1 is the software-defined networking (SDN) capability. This is still an early version, but it allows Proxmox VE to manage secure networks across virtualization clusters. This release has the core feature updated to a supported status, but there are still components like the IP address management that are labeled as tech preview.
SDN is an important feature for Proxmox VE to add, so it is great to see that happen in this release. If you are building a new Proxmox VE test host or test cluster, this is certainly worth checking out.
There are other nice features. For example, if you have installed some guests like Windows hosts that need an ISO for Virtio drivers, that can how happen during the VM creation wizard.
Another nice feature is that Proxmox VE 8.1 is moving to a new notifications system. We had a whole piece on why Proxmox VE E-mail Notifications are Important. Now that capability is being upgraded and integrated into things like backup notification flows.
Ceph has been upgraded to Ceph Reef by default. Proxmox was also assigned an Organizationally Unique Identifier (OUI) from the IEEE. Now Proxmox VE VMs will have default MAC address prefix for virtual guests that start with BC:24:11.
Final Words
There are many great features in this new release, but the software defined networking capability is going to be a big deal since Proxmox VE’s networking feels quite a bit older at this point. Hopefully the Proxmox VE team rapidly advances this capability over the next few releases.
For those eagle-eyed readers that may have noticed this, we are not using our normal host to show these screenshots. Instead, it is a really neat platform with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D that we will have a review of very soon. Stay tuned for that.
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Worth noting: OpenZFS 2.2.0 is rumored to have a bug that may cause loss of data, something to do with the new block cloning feature.
@Joel Any idea if Proxmox has the offending features enabled by default?
Bug is identifyed (https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/issues/15526) and corrected in OpenZFS 2.2.1 (https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/releases/tag/zfs-2.2.1)