Proxmox Server Solutions has just announced the first Arm64 edition of its widely popular Proxmox Virtual Environment, marking the platform’s first move beyond the x86-64 architecture.
The new edition is neither a community-maintained port nor an experimental technology preview. Proxmox VE 9.2 for Arm64 has the same codebase, package repositories, release lifecycle, configuration tools, and documentation as the x86-64 version.
Along with the x86-64 version, Proxmox also provides an Arm64 enterprise repository and commercial support at the same service levels available to x86-64 customers.
The Arm64 version is built on Debian 13.5 “Trixie” and has the Linux kernel 7.0 as its stable default. It includes the same versions of the main components as the x86-64 version, such as QEMU 11.0, LXC 7.0, and ZFS 2.4.
Proxmox states that the new version includes the entire virtualization and storage infrastructure of the platform, comprising KVM virtual machines, LXC containers, software-defined networking, high-availability clustering, backup facilities, ZFS, and Ceph; users also have access to the well-known web-based management interface, which is used to administer current Proxmox VE environments.
But what’s more interesting, Proxmox carried out the development and validation of the Arm64 edition in technical cooperation with NVIDIA and Supermicro, using server systems based on the NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchip.
Initial official hardware support is directed towards systems that use NVIDIA Grace Hopper and NVIDIA Vera processors, since these platforms are designed for demanding data center, cloud computing, accelerated computing, artificial intelligence training, and inference tasks.
Support for other UEFI-based ARMv9-A or later server systems is provided on a best-effort basis. Although Proxmox states that ARMv8-A hardware will generally work as well, this too is only covered on a best-effort basis and not through full official support.
The system host has to start up using UEFI and then describe its hardware using ACPI; as a result, single-board computers that rely solely on a device tree (such as the Raspberry Pi) are not officially supported. Although community users might still manage to run the platform on some of these devices by using additional firmware or making manual configurations, such installations are outside the supported hardware range.
There are also a number of differences which are specific to various architectures. Arm64 virtual machines always start up via UEFI, using the Arm version of OVMF, known as AAVMF, since SeaBIOS is not available for this architecture. Technologies specifically associated with x86 processors, such as AMD Secure Encrypted Virtualization and Intel GVT-g-mediated graphics virtualization, are therefore not available.
Moreover, guests may only run on hosts with the same CPU architecture; an Arm64 virtual machine must run on an Arm64 node, and an x86-64 guest must run on x86-64 hardware. Likewise, live migration is only possible between nodes that have the same architecture.
Even though Proxmox does not technically prevent administrators from adding x86-64 and Arm64 nodes to the same cluster, mixed-architecture clusters are not officially supported. Cross-architecture live migration is impossible, and high-availability placement would have to make sure that guests remain on compatible nodes.
It is also not possible to simply transfer existing x86-64 guests and then start them on an Arm64 node. Although their data can be migrated via offline migration, backup and restore, or shared storage, the operating system must be reinstalled or reconfigured to run on Arm64 before it can boot on the new host.
The company is also looking to introduce other products within its ecosystem on Arm64, with internal test versions already available for several, including Proxmox Backup Server, even though Proxmox has not yet decided on a public release timetable. Future priorities will be determined mainly by demand from enterprise customers.
For additional details, see the official announcement or check out this post.
Proxmox VE for Arm64 is now available right away, either as a dedicated bare-metal ISO image or via the package repositories alongside the current x86-64 versions.
