Upgrade to Proxmox 8 – 3 important reasons to do it now

Whenever a new software package is released, us homelab-ers love to lick our lips in anticipation of the latest release. However, is it worth the pain to upgrade to Proxmox 8.0, especially something so vital as our visualisation layer?

If you’re like me – and most “homelab” enthusiasts out there, you’ll understand the challenge this questions represents. If you’re like me and most home installations of Proxmox, you’ll probably not be running multiple instances in a ceph cluster. Can you risk any downtime in your main Proxmox instance (especially if you’ve followed our guides and you’re using it to run your Home Assistant instance).

New features when you upgrade to Proxmox 8.0

Lets summarise the main features you’ll get in Promox 8.0 over your existing Promox 7 instance, and what that means for your homelab instance.

• New Ceph Enterprise repository: An easier Ceph setup. If you’re just using one Homelab server, its unlikely you’ll use this.
• Authentication realm sync jobs: Useful if you’re running a AD domain, but I’ve never seen an issue here with either Proxmox 6 or 7.
• Network resources are now available as objects in the access control subsystem (ACL). Overkill of most Homelabbers, but useful to tinker with.
• Resource mappings: Mappings between PCI(e) or USB devices, acan now be created and managed in the API and the web interface. If you’re using PCI or USB devices (such as a Conbee II stick into Home Assistant, or a GPU into a VM), this is a much needed improvement.
• Secure lockout for Two-factor authentication/TOTP. User lockouts and better integration with 2FA, this is a much needed improvement.
• Text-based user interface (TUI) for the installer ISO. Unless you’re installing Proxmox a lot, you an mostly ignore this improvement.
• The x86-64-v2-AES model is the new default CPU type for VMs created via the web interface. Last in the list, this is probably the most important upgrade – and should lead to higher performance and lower energy consumption.

So should I upgrade to Proxmox 8?

Based on the above, there’s little to recommend to update to version 8 for the average homelab enthusiast, but there are some reasons to consider the update.

1. Better Performance

The update of the default CPU type for VMs to x86-64-v2-AES is due to give an improvement in performance, which for similar workloads should drive a decrease in energy requirements.

2. Improved security

The updates to 2FA, authentication sync and network resource ACLs provide a broad set of security improvements that will make your Proxmox instance more secure.

3. Improved resource mapping

Anyone that has tried to setup a virtualised gaming PC or used any passthrough device knows how challenging and flakey this can be with Proxmox. This improvement should make this more robust and easier to setup.

Conclusion

So, should you update to Proxmox 8.0? The answer is, probably yes. Just for the security improvements alone its worth updating your instance, especially if you expose any of your cluster to the public internet. If you’re interested in what else you can achieve with Promox and home assistant be sure to check out some of our other guides.