News

Proxmox Update Supports Open vSwitch

The Proxmox open-source server virtualization platform also adds SPICE and Ceph support.

• By Christa Ayer
• 03/24/2014

Proxmox has released version 3.2 of its Proxmox Virtual Environment open-source server virtualization platform. Key new features/enhancements include the ability to choose between Simple Protocol for Independent Computing Environments (SPICE) and VNC for accessing virtual machine consoles, and the ability to build the Ceph storage cluster directly on Proxmox VE hosts. The new version also includes updates, such as qemu 1.7, improved live backup, support for VMware pvscsi and vmxnet3, a new ZFS storage plug-in, the most recent NIC drivers, and bug fixes.

In addition to a choice of SPICE or VNC for accessing VM consoles, via spiceterm (a program developed by Proxmox), admins can use SPICE to access OpenVZ containers or the host shell. The resizable spiceterm console offers a fully functional keyboard, including special characters such as the pipe and @ symbols and function keys such as Ctrl+C. On the client side, admins need to install only a SPICE remote viewer. Proxmox has released Virt-viewer packages for Linux and Windows, as well as a compatible app called aSPICE for the Android.

Another enhancement to Proxmox VE version 3.2 is a technology preview of the network software switch Open vSwitch (OVS) on the host network level. Consisting of user space tools and kernel modules, Open vSwitch is a multi-layer virtual switch that allows massive network automation, while still supporting standard management interfaces and protocols and distribution across multiple physical servers.