The release of Proxmox Virtual Environment 7.0 has been published, a specialized Linux distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux, aimed at deploying and managing virtual servers using LXC and KVM, capable of replacing products such as VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix Hypervisor. The size of the installation iso image is 1 GB.
Proxmox VE provides tools for deploying a fully functional industrial-grade virtual server system, managed through a web interface designed for handling hundreds or even thousands of virtual machines. The distribution includes built-in tools for organizing backups of virtual environments and offers out-of-the-box clustering support, including the ability to migrate virtual environments from one node to another without downtime. Features of the web interface include: support for secure VNC console; role-based access management to all available objects (VM, storage, nodes, etc.); and support for various authentication mechanisms (MS ADS, LDAP, Linux PAM, Proxmox VE authentication).
In the new release:
- The transition to Debian 11 (Bullseye) base has been completed. The Linux kernel has been updated to version 5.11. Versions of LXC 4.0, QEMU 6.0 (with support for asynchronous I/O interface io_uring for guest systems), and OpenZFS 2.0.4 have been updated.
- Ceph 16.2 release is enabled by default (support for Ceph 15.2 is retained as an option). For new clusters, the balancer module is enabled by default for better distribution of groups across OSD.
- Support for Btrfs filesystem has been added, including on the root partition. The use of subvolume snapshots, built-in RAID, and verification of data and metadata integrity via checksums is supported.
- The web interface has added a 'Repositories' panel, simplifying the management of APT package repositories, with information now collected in one place (for instance, new Ceph releases can be tested by activating the testing repository and then disabling it to revert to stable packages). The Notes panel now supports Markdown formatting in notes, displaying as HTML in the interface. A disk cleaning function via GUI has been proposed. Support for tokens (e.g., YubiKey) as keys for SSH when creating containers and preparing images with cloud-init has been provided.
- Support for Single Sign-On (SSO) has been added to provide a single entry point using OpenID Connect.
- The installer environment has been redesigned, using switch_root instead of chroot, ensuring automatic detection of HiDPI screens for font size selection, and improved detection of iso images. The zstd algorithm has been applied for compressing initrd and squashfs images.
- A separate ACME plugin has been added (used for obtaining Let’s Encrypt certificates) with enhanced support for environments that have connectivity via both IPv4 and IPv6.
- For new installations, the ifupdown2 network connection manager is used by default.
- Chrony has been engaged as the implementation of the NTP server instead of systemd-timesyncd.
Source: opennet.ru
