Proxmox VE 8.2 Released

Proxmox VE 8.2 was released on April 24, 2024, and brings a bunch of enhancements to an already great platform.

Proxmox VE 8.2 Changes and New Features

At its core, Proxmox VE 8.2 now runs Debian 12.5 (Bookworm) and supports the Linux Kernel 6.8. With those updates, QEMU 8.1, Ceph Reef 18.2, LXC 6.0, and Open ZFS 2.2 are all running on the new version as well.

One huge feature released is the addition of automated and unattended installations. You can now roll out a full setup using the proxmox-auto-install-assistant tool for quick deployments of Proxmox VE hosts.

Along with that comes an import wizard for VMware ESXi VMs and provides an easy way for existing ESXi users to migrate to Proxmox VE and bring all of their VMware-based virtual machines with them.

Another huge change is to the way backups are conducted. Traditionally, backups that are running slow could impact the guest-VMs performance, but with a new backup fleecing technique, data blocks are cached which can greatly improve the performance of a VM as a backup is running.

Finally, a brand new and modernized firewall using nftables was released in Proxmox VE 8.2. This feature is written in Rust and replaces iptables to offer a better overall approach to network security management.

There are additional improvements like device passthrough for Containers, advanced settings for backups, enhancements to the GUI, and changes to how certificates can be configured. Overall, this seems like a great upgrade and it offers a bunch of functionality, especially after all of the ESXi woes of the past few months.

For a full list of Proxmox VE 8.2 changes, please view the official Proxmox website.

How to Upgrade to Proxmox VE 8.2

Assuming you’re already running a version of Proxmox 8.0 or newer, you can upgrade your system by running a single command from the Shell.

apt update && apt upgrade -y

Just make sure that you’re using the no subscription repository if you’re not using the Enterprise version of Proxmox! If you’d like to install Proxmox VE 8.2 from scratch, you can follow these instructions.