[Users] OpenVZ 9.0 - Alpha Release

[Maik Broemme]

Hi,

I'm pleased to announce the release of OpenVZ 9.0 Alpha Release. Yes it
is no joke, after 5 months since OpenVZ 8.0 Alpha Release. :) The new
release focuses on rebasing OpenVZ to the latest Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 9 Beta with 5.14.x kernel, QEMU 6.0.x and libvirt 7.6.x.

This version is not ready for production use. While we don't intend to
release broken builds, these releases are very early in development, and
not supported for production use, as they may contain errors, and any
resulting instability could cause crashes or data loss, so you should
not deploy this to a production environment. Instead, please try out the
builds in a lab or test environment.

New Features
============

* XFS is now the default filesystem used in containers.

* QCOW2 disk images can be used as virtual disks for containers.

* The dispatcher component is now optional and not installed by default.
  That means, for example, that 'prl*' tools like 'prlctl' are not
  available by default.

* The primary API for managing virtual environments is now libvirt.

* The tools for managing virtual environments are now 'virsh' and
  'virt-install'

* The Parallels SDK as well as the 'prl*' tools can be installed for
  backward compatibility.

* Supported guest operating systems for creating new containers and
  virtual machines are: VzLinux 7 and 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and
  8, CentOS 7, AlmaLinux 8, Debian 10, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and 20.04 LTS.
  Additionally, these guest operating systems are supported in virtual
  machines only: Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows
  Server 2022.

* Migration of containers and virtual machines based on older guest
  operating systems, into this Alpha version, should continue to work.

Download
========

All binary components as well as installation ISO images are freely
available at the OpenVZ download server:

https://download.openvz.org/virtuozzo/releases/9.0/
https://download.openvz.org/virtuozzo/releases/9.0/x86_64/iso/openvz-iso-9.0.0-248.iso

and mirrors:

https://mirrors.openvz.org/

The source code of each component is available in the public repository:

https://src.openvz.org/projects/OVZ

Feedback
========

Each release includes one or more changes and therefore we are looking to our
user base in testing the new features and improvements of upcoming major
release and providing valued feedback.

This allows critical issues or fixes to be addressed, please provide Alpha
feedback to OpenVZ users mailing list users at openvz.org or submitting a
bug in case of a serious issue to https://bugs.openvz.org/

Sincerely,
Maik