Upgrading workstation to Proxmox Virtual Environment 8

Proxmox Virtual Environment 8 was recently released. Based on Debian 12, it also comes with instructions on how to upgrade from Proxmox VE 7 to Proxmox VE 8.

I decided to slowly upgrade my home servers to Proxmox VE 8, starting with my Fujitsu Celsius M740 Proxmox workstation that was installed with XFCE desktop on top of Proxmox VE 7. As the base installation was Proxmox VE 7, it was supposed to be a simple matter of following the upgrade instructions.

However, somewhere during

apt dist-upgrade

the process hung when setting up libgdk-pixbuf-2. I had to abort the process, then run

apt -f install

dpkg --configure -a

apt dist-upgrade

to finally get everything properly upgraded.

Running neofetch then gave me this:

😍

I will slowly be upgrading the other servers (probably the ML110 Gen9 first, followed by the custom install on top of LMDE5). I also have a server with Proxmox VE 7 and Proxmox Backup Server installed that has yet to be put into service, and I will wait for Proxmox Backup Server to be supported on Debian 12 before upgrading this one, since the upgrade instructions say "Co-installed Proxmox Backup Server should wait until a public beta or final version will be released."

 

Update 10 July 2023: My Microserver Gen8 with Proxmox VE 7 and Proxmox Backup Server 2 has been successfully upgraded to Proxmox VE 8 and Proxmox Backup Server 3, following the instructions here and here.

The screenshot only shows Proxmox VE but it is actually co-installed with Proxmox Backup Server. It is currently not in use but I intend to switch my existing Proxmox Backup Server to the Microserver Gen8 eventually. The current server, though, has low power draw and is therefore really great for 24/7 operations. The Microserver Gen8 draws more power (and even more if I add a SAS controller to use SAS drives) but it comes with iLO4 which makes remote management a lot easier.

Update 11 July 2023: I finally updated my main server, the ML110 Gen9. All I needed to do was to follow the instructions here.

It upgraded without a hitch. I also added another 4x3.5-inch drive cage to the server, so it can handle up to 8x3.5-inch drives now. All of them are connected to a SAS controller that is passed through to the TrueNAS VM.