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tl;dr
HyperCloud and VM Squared 2.6 bring groundbreaking AI enhancements and hardware support. With PCI passthrough for Qualcomm Cloud AI cards and improved NVIDIA GRID, we’re stepping up our game. We’re now an official Qualcomm partner and are in talks with NVIDIA about official support. Plus, VM Squared debuts PCI passthrough for GPUs/NPUs, and the Glasshouse GUI now features an AI chatbot ready to tackle your documentation questions. Other highlights include vTPM 2.0, VM-specific key management, enhanced Windows 11/Server 2025 support, and an updated post-quantum crypto engine that’s fully FIPS 203 compliant.
The AI revolution meets cloud and virtualization
Our latest release kicks off with a suite of AI features designed to turbocharge your infrastructure. We’re excited to introduce PCI passthrough support for Qualcomm Cloud AI cards – covering both the 80 and 100 line as well as Pro and Ultra variants. As an official Qualcomm partner, we’re pushing the envelope on what’s possible in AI acceleration, all while retaining robust support for NVIDIA A10 and H10. And speaking of NVIDIA, we’ve taken GRID support up a notch. Not only can you now specify exact vGPU models from your templates, but we’ve bumped the GRID version to the latest 16.9. Rumor has it that our recent Qualcomm alliance has even sparked a bit of FOMO on NVIDIA’s side as talks progress toward official support.
Death to hardware headaches
VM Squared makes its debut with PCI passthrough support for both GPUs and NPUs, as well as NVIDIA GRID. This marks a first for VM Squared and means you can now seamlessly migrate VMs with vGPUs—say goodbye to the manual wrangling of complex hardware configurations.
The UI gets a brain boost
The Glasshouse GUI isn’t just about pretty buttons anymore. We’re rolling out an AI chatbot capability designed to answer your documentation questions—helping you find the right info without the endless scrolling. While the dream is to have a bot that can act on your behalf, consider this an early step on that long journey.
More features and a stronger foundation
- Virtual Trusted Platform Module 2.0 (vTPM): Your VMs now get the extra security and trust they deserve.
- VM-specific key management: Fine-tune your security with dedicated keys per VM.
- Windows 11 & Windows Server 2025 support: Fully optimized and required for these modern environments.
- Secure Boot UEFI support for VMs: More convenience with enhanced security.
- Post-quantum crypto update: Our crypto engine is now fully FIPS 203 compliant, dropping draft Kyber support in favor of the latest ML-KEM standards.
Under the hood and in the lab
We’ve also sharpened our toolkit for power users and operators: HyperCloud now supports in-VM PCIe peer-to-peer for Qualcomm Cloud AI cards, firmware-type selection (BIOS vs. UEFI) in the Glasshouse UI, and initial driver support for next-gen SoftIron network interconnects. Key-management pros will appreciate the new escrow-key workflows via manage-disk-encryption, while performance engineers can benchmark storage with sibench and network links with iPerf. Finally, our advanced template editor in the UI lets you tweak VM and service definitions without dropping to the CLI.
Power-user and operator corner
VM Squared 2.6.0 extends our hardware support with AMD GPU passthrough alongside NVIDIA and Qualcomm AI cards. You can now choose your syslog protocol (UDP/TCP) from the UI, inspect multipath device status in the restricted shell, and rest easy knowing that expert-mode access prompts for confirmation and is permanently logged. These quality-of-life improvements keep your ops smooth and your audit trails clean.
Under the hood
We’ve fortified the platform against an astounding 246 CVEs—while listing each one would rival a phone book (does anyone still use a phone book?), rest assured your security posture has never been stronger.
What’s next?
While we’re not promising a future where your infrastructure runs itself (yet), these updates reflect our commitment to delivering a platform that’s as forward-thinking as it is user-friendly. HyperCloud and VM Squared 2.6 are here to power your journey into a smarter, more secure, and AI-enabled world.
For all the gritty details, check out our full release notes. And as always, our team is ready to help you navigate this new frontier.
Stay innovative, The SoftIron Team
