20 years of Proxmox VE: Version 9.0 with new storage features, SDN networks & HA

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To coincide with the company's 20th anniversary, Vienna-based Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH has released Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) 9.0 and the matching Proxmox Backup Server 4.0. The new versions are based on Debian GNU/Linux 13.0 "Trixie" and include new packages and improved hardware support. Instead of the standard kernel, the Proxmox VE developers have once again built a customized Linux kernel based on Linux 6.14.8-2.

The emulation and virtualization of the hardware in virtual machines (VMs) is handled by QEMU 10.0.2, which mainly contained improvements for RISC-V and ARM in the last major update. The containers are provided by Proxmox VE 9.0 via LXC 6.0.4, which unfortunately has not brought any exciting innovations for a long time – it simply works and seems to be feature-complete. OpenZFS 2.3.3 is responsible for the mass storage, which allows the relatively easy expansion of RAIDZ pools with minimal downtime. Data storage can thus be scaled flexibly and without significant downtime by gradually adding new drives to existing RAIDZ virtual devices (vdevs). The standard for distributed storage solutions is now Ceph 19.2 "Squid".

Virtual machines with LXC and QEMU

The project for Linux Containers (LXC) has some bug fixes in the changelog in the version used by Proxmox VE 9.0. It is particularly pleased about the funding from the Sovereign Tech Fund under the care of the Sovereign Tech Agency, which has recently started pumping money into other projects such as FreeBSD. Proxmox VE 9.0 allows devices to be added to LXC containers during operation. However, the container still has to be shut down to make changes or remove devices.

Another detail: The WebGUI previously created LXC containers as "unprivileged", while containers created in the Proxmox terminal or via API were set up as "privileged". Since the latter causes some security problems, Proxmox VE 9.0 now creates all LXC containers with restricted privileges.

The QEMU 10.0.2 used in Proxmox VE 9.0 only improves the emulation for string instructions for the x86 platform and supports the CPU models for the ClearwaterForest and SierraForest v2 architecture. In general, the optimizations for VFIO (Virtual Function I/O) and virtio drivers can provide slightly better performance. The changes in Proxmox VE 9.0 concern the live migration of VMs and their import as well as a bugfix for Nvidia vGPUs.

Snapshots for thick-provisioned LVM shared storage

The new snapshot function for thick-provisioned LVM shared storage makes it possible to use snapshots as "volume chains". Only changes to the parent volume are saved. This also applies to directory, NFS and CIFS storages. The function offers a storage-independent snapshot solution, especially for SAN environments, and simplifies administration regardless of the hardware used.

The new "Fabrics" function in the SDN stack simplifies the setup and management of complex, routed networks. It supports robust spine-leaf architectures with multiple paths and automatic failover across different network cards, which increases resilience and performance in the data center. Fabrics is suitable for EVPN (Ethernet VPN) underlays or Ceph full mesh networks, for example. The SDN stack of Proxmox VE 9.0 now supports OpenFabric and OSPF and offers user-friendly management tools.

New affinity rules for high availability clusters

The new HA affinity rules in Proxmox enable targeted distribution of VMs and HA resources in high availability clusters. Administrators can define which VMs or services should run together or separately on nodes, for example to minimize latency for connected applications or to increase redundancy for critical workloads. In this way, reliability and performance can be improved through flexible control of resource distribution.

For mobile devices, Proxmox VE 9.0 offers an improved user interface based on the new Proxmox widget toolkit, which is based on the Rust-based Yew framework. This means that data centers can be managed on the move using a cell phone.

Safety net: The new Proxmox Backup Server 4.0

Shortly after the release of Proxmox VE 9.0, the developers also released Proxmox Backup Server 4.0. It is now also based on Debian GNU/Linux 13.0 "Trixie".

The Proxmox Backup Server 4.0 natively supports S3-compatible object storage as backup backend. This allows the use of scalable, cost-efficient cloud environments (public or private) for data backup via S3 API. A local cache reduces API calls by storing frequently used metadata and data chunks to improve performance and reduce costs. Although each S3 datastore is managed exclusively by a Proxmox instance, the data in the object store remains available even in the event of server failure. This provides a robust basis for disaster recovery scenarios.

The Proxmox Backup Server 4.0 allows automatic sync jobs when a removable datastore is connected using the "run-on-mount" flag. This allows backups to be synchronized without manual intervention. With ZFS 2.3.3, Proxmox Backup Server 4.0, like Proxmox VE 9.0, supports the live extension of RAIDZ pools. The Backup Server still integrates seamlessly into the Proxmox VE infrastructure by adding a Proxmox Backup Server datastore as a new backup target storage in Proxmox VE.

Mail Gateway and Proxmox Datacenter Manager

The Proxmox Mail Gateway will also be updated to Debian GNU/Linux 13.0 "Trixie" in the following weeks. Work is also continuing on the Proxmox Datacenter Manager. The current development of the alpha version can best be followed in the Proxmox forum.

All improvements and new features as well as possible problems with the upgrade from Proxmox VE 8.4 to 9.0 (under "Known Issues & Breaking Changes") are described in detail in the Proxmox roadmap. Proxmox VE 9.0, Proxmox Backup Server 4.0 and Proxmox Mail Gateway are now available for download as open source software and can be used free of charge. Access to the enterprise repository is available from 115 euros (net) per year, professional support costs between 355 and 1060 euros (net) per year and CPU socket.

(mki)