Stability VS Features

[giner]

Dear Proxmox Team,

Why do we love Debian? Why do we love Ubuntu Server? It is simple: we can do "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" everyday without any impact. We can even do it automatically, no, I do not recommend to do it and I just would like to point that it is possible without any stability impact. I have quite a big number of Ubuntu servers over the world and I update all of them using apt-dater once a week. It takes me a little time without any worry at all.

Today I recommend Proxmox VE for all people who ask me about virtualization. I am also trying to promote this software in our big international company cause I love open source and love feeling being part of the community.

And so I would like to raise a question regarding Proxmox VE updates. I am personally experienced Arch Linux user (popular rolling based distribution) so I used (and like) to live on the cutting edge and can cope with most of update problems. But the problem is I would call it "self"-promotion. Just a short time ago I had another chance to promote Proxmox VE but that was exactly that time when it had an online migration problem (just after upgrade to qemu 1.3) and I decided not to talk about Proxmox VE until it fixed in order not to make a bad impression.

It is clear that the way Ubuntu goes is very difficult and requires a lot of resources, I am talking about supporting several stable branches at the same time with only minor and security updates for each. But I assume there is a way to make Proxmox VE updates more stable even using current workflow. It could be, for example, more time to test updates in "pve-test" before they are moved to "pve" or may be one have better idea, anyway I think that should be done in a someway.

Thank you for your hard work and keeping Proxmox VE the best open source virtualization platform!

Best regards,
Stanislav German-Evtushenko

 

[tom]

Ubuntu is great but there are also bugs in their releases, I see no difference here to other distributions like Proxmox VE.

People can do more tests with pvetest packages. Testing in our lab is never enough so if someone want to help, help in testing. btw, the migration bug with 1.3 seems already solved.

 

[giner]

> Ubuntu is great but there are also bugs in their releases, I see no difference here to other distributions like Proxmox VE.
For sure. The most important point is that these bugs are "stable" during support time and it is 5 years for LTS. One able to find a solution or workaround and live 5 years with it. But if something already works, we rely on it (online migration, backups, etc) and that can be broken on any update - this is a scary.

 

[giner]

> Btw, the migration bug with 1.3 seems already solved.
I know as I was an active tester for that bug

 

[udo]

Ubuntu is great but there are also bugs in their releases, I see no difference here to other distributions like Proxmox VE.

People can do more tests with pvetest packages. Testing in our lab is never enough so if someone want to help, help in testing. btw, the migration bug with 1.3 seems already solved.

Hi,
I also use the pvetest repository for testing - but this is like testing in your lab (or less). Real production use look different. And pvetest is definitly not for production (normaly...).
Perhaps is a third repository reasonable - like pve_early_adaptors for production save new commits (after pvetest).
So much more people have the chance to use this repository also in production (not to hear from the boss, who the heck you can use test-software for production).

But I'm not sure how many people are able to use such a repository - if there not enough it's useless.

On the other side, the great thing at pve is the good comunity and the fast resolving of issues - if I had a cluster which need be very very stable, I update not so fast...

Udo

 

[giner]

> On the other side, the great thing at pve is the good comunity and the fast resolving of issues - if I had a cluster which need be very very stable, I update not so fast...
I have to update our servers in order to follow our security requirements. So if Debian updates comes I have to install them in reasonable time. Should I split updates to Debian updates and Proxmox VE updates? I am not sure this is a way. Too complicated.

 

[dietmar]

> Btw, the migration bug with 1.3 seems already solved.
I know as I was an active tester for that bug

We fix bugs really fast. If you have a valid subscription we could fix bugs even faster.

 

[giner]

We fix bugs really fast. If you have a valid subscription we could fix bugs even faster.

I'm not against you, I'm totally in, I would be happy if my company pays for open source solution and not for proprietary VMware.
First I need to convince our top IT managers we can rely on that software and than I can try to motivate them to integrate it widely. I have already done it with Ubuntu (Ubuntu has been approved by German team as one of two main distributions for our company), with Redmine (it is approved by German team as a main project management system for global IT) and I managed to motivate German IT to make a donation for Redmine (that was the only way to say thank you for Redmine developers as they don't have a subscription option or something).