Ceph 20.2 "Tentacle" Available as Test Preview in Proxmox Repository

The Proxmox team announced on January 9, 2026 that Ceph 20.2, codenamed "Tentacle," is available for installation and upgrade via the Proxmox Ceph test repository. The announcement follows a period of internal testing at Proxmox, during which the team ran Tentacle on production-equivalent infrastructure and reported no major issues. The test preview status means the packages are available for evaluation but have not yet been promoted to the no-subscription or enterprise repositories that most production Proxmox deployments use.

The repository news carries an important adjacent message: Ceph 18.2 "Reef" is now end-of-life. Proxmox notes that efforts are underway to produce one final post-EOL update for Reef, but administrators still running it should treat migration as urgent. Ceph 19.2 "Squid" remains supported until September 2026, giving Squid users a defined window before they face the same EOL pressure. This creates a tiered urgency: Reef users should migrate immediately, Squid users have until September 2026, and operators evaluating a fresh deployment or major upgrade have Tentacle available for early testing.

Installation and Upgrade Path

For Proxmox environments currently running Ceph 19.2 Squid, an upgrade guide to Tentacle is available at the Proxmox wiki. Administrators installing Tentacle on a fresh cluster must manually configure the test repository and use the "manual" mode in the Ceph installation wizard, a feature available since Proxmox VE 9.1. The manual mode requirement reflects the intentional barrier Proxmox maintains to prevent production clusters from accidentally pulling preview-quality packages through automated update workflows.

Proxmox's planned promotion path for Tentacle follows its standard process: gather testing and quality assurance feedback from the community while the packages remain in the test repository, then move them to the no-subscription repository once stability is confirmed, and finally populate the enterprise repository when the team is confident the release is fully production-ready. There is no published timeline for these promotions, as they depend on community feedback volume and the absence of blocking bugs discovered during the preview phase.

Context and Recommendations

Ceph 20.2 Tentacle is a major version release following the Squid line. Major Ceph releases typically introduce new features, deprecate older configuration options, and may change default behaviors that affect existing pools and OSDs. Before upgrading any production cluster to Tentacle, administrators should review the official Ceph 20.2 release notes for removed features and changed defaults, particularly around CRUSH rules, BlueStore settings, and RBD mirroring configurations. For Proxmox hyperconverged clusters where Ceph provides the storage backend for running virtual machines, testing Tentacle on a non-production cluster before committing to a production upgrade is strongly recommended. The Proxmox community forum thread tracking the Tentacle preview is the appropriate place to report issues and monitor resolution status ahead of the no-subscription promotion.