Upgrade Proxmox Host to 8.1: Tutorial & Steps

Let’s look at the steps to upgrade your Proxmox host to Proxmox 8.1. In the example below, I will be upgrading an 8.0.3 host that I have running to 8.1 in the home lab.

New features

There are many new features to speak of in Proxmox 8.1. I just uploaded a post covering the new features. However, as a quick overview, the major new features include:

• Software-defined networking
• Secure boot
• New bulk actions
• Upgraded Linux kernel
• A new flexible notification system
• Upgraded Ceph Reef version

No enterprise subscription prerequisites

If you are running Proxmox in the home lab and aren’t running an enterprise subscription, which is how most home lab enthusiasts will be running, you need to reconfigure your update repositories. You may have already done this earlier for a lower-level Proxmox version. However, if you haven’t already updated it to the “bookworm” repo, we will need to make that change, and then also change to the Ceph “reef” repo.

Update the following files in the comment lines:

#/etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list

From: deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm enterprise
To: deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription

#/etc/apt/sources.list.d/ceph.list
From: deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/ceph-quincy bookworm enterprise
To: deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/ceph-reef bookworm no-subscription

Proxmox 8.1 upgrade steps from the GUI

After you have reconfigured the files above, you will need to refresh your updates. The following are Proxmox 8.1 upgrade steps using the GUI web interface.

First, click your Proxmox host in the GUI. Navigate to System > Updates > Refresh. When you click Refresh, it runs an “apt-get update”.

You will see the Task viewer display the status of the apt-get update.

After refreshing the updates, you can click the Upgrade button.

It will launch another browser window displaying the prompt for you to enter Y to confirm you want to continue the upgrade process.

After all the upgrade process is complete, you will see the note that a new kernel was installed and a reboot is required to instantiate the new kernel. Here I am typing reboot from the window.

Proxmox 8.1 upgrade steps from the command line

The upgrade steps from the command line are very simple. We just run the commands the GUI runs for us from the command line.

First we refresh the updates after we have updated the repository URLs. To do that, run the following commands:

apt update

Next, we run the following command:

apt dist upgrade

After the upgrade is successful from the command line, if you look at your Proxmox host summary, you will see it has upgraded to 8.1.3, but the Linux kernel is still at version 6.2. So, we need to reboot.

From the command line issue the reboot command:

reboot

Now, we can check the kernel version again and we see the Linux 6.5 kernel has been installed.

Steps to upgrade from Proxmox 7.4 to Proxmox 8.1

The steps to upgrade from Proxmox 7.4 to Proxmox 8.1 are fairly straightforward. However, it does involve more steps if you are currently running Ceph Quincy.

First, you will need to upgrade Ceph from Pacific to Quincy. The next step involves upgrading Proxmox VE from version 7.4 to 8.1. In the last step, once you have Proxmox VE 8.1 running, you will upgrade your Ceph installation to Reef.

Here are the links to the official documentation on those specific steps:

• Ceph Pacific to Quincy Upgrade Guide
• Upgrading from Proxmox VE 7 to 8
• Ceph Quincy to Reef Upgrade Guide

Mini PC running Proxmox

If you are looking for something to run Proxmox, you can easily install it on a Mini PC to get your feet wet in the home lab. Check out the video below:

Wrapping up the Proxmox 8.1 upgrade steps

As shown, the upgrade to Proxmox 8.1 can be accomplished using the Proxmox GUI and the command line. The steps involve changing the update repositories if you aren’t running with a Proxmox subscription. Once you have the repositories updated, you can refresh the updates and install the available updates, including the upgrade to Proxmox 8.1.