A month after its previous 6.3 release, Incus, an open-source container and virtual machine manager, released its latest update, Incus 6.4, labeled by its developers as a “balanced release with something new for everyone.”
For those unfamiliar, exactly a year ago, the project emerged in response to Canonicalโs increased control over LXD, aiming to provide an open-source alternative that remains under the stewardship of the original LXD community.
This latest update introduces new features and bug fixes, enhances support for complex shared and cluster environments, and improves overall system robustness and user experience.
Incus 6.4 Highlights
One of Incus 6.4’s standout features is the revamped approach to cluster group configurations. Users can now manage cluster groups with the same ease and flexibility as other Incus objects using a standard set of commands and APIs.
This simplifies the process of editing, retrieving, and setting configurations for cluster groups, making it more intuitive for system administrators.
Moreover, Incus 6.4 allows for detailed customization of virtual machine CPU settings at the cluster group level. Administrators can specify CPU baselines and flags for VMs within each cluster group, ensuring optimal compatibility and performance tailored to specific hardware generations or models.
The update also introduces the ability to utilize a sub-path of a volume as a disk source, enhancing flexibility in storage management. This allows containers to share a common volume without compromising the isolation and security of data within each container.
Another exciting novelty in the new release is that it extends its versatility with improvements to project-specific resource limits. More specifically, administrators can now set storage usage limits on a per-pool basis within projects.
Additionally, Incus 6.4 introduces the ability to create isolated OVN (Open Virtual Network) networks without an uplink. This update allows for creating fully isolated network environments, which is crucial for testing and security-sensitive applications where no external network connectivity is desired.
But wait, there’s more. The update also focuses on improving resource isolation and system stability with the option to run a dedicated LXCFS (a FUSE filesystem designed for use by LXC containers) instance for each container.
This is great because it reduces the risk associated with shared resources and improves the system’s reliability by isolating the impact of a single LXCFS instance failure.
Lastly, Incus 6.4 simplifies the deployment of OCI containers by introducing support for environment variable files during the create or launch phases.
Users are encouraged to try out these new features by visiting the Incus online platform, which provides a hands-on experience with the latest version.
Visit the release announcement or check out the full changelog for more information about the Incus 6.4 container and virtual machine manager changes.
