diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS
index f9cecb7b38e1adc881b5199467abe968a8c85d71..c1ce4b72f1223f8132bcc270892dde58f1ff807d 100644
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+++ b/NEWS
@@ -1,3 +1,117 @@
+Version 2.0 beta 1
+  - Version 2 is a general rewrite of the code and therefore the
+    differences are too many to list, see the design document for 2.0 in
+    the doc/ subdirectory for more details
+  - In this beta version there is not yet a migration path from 1.2
+    (there will be one in the final 2.0 release)
+  - A few significant changes are:
+    - all commands are executed by a daemon (ganeti-masterd) and the
+      various gnt-* commands are just front-ends to it
+    - all the commands are entered into, and executed from a job queue,
+      see gnt-job(8)
+    - the RAPI daemon supports read-write operations, secured by basic
+      HTTP authentication on top of HTTPS
+    - DRBD version 0.7 support has been removed, DRBD 8 is the only
+      supported version (when migrating from Ganeti 1.2 to 2.0, you need
+      to migrate to DRBD 8 first while still running Ganeti 1.2)
+    - DRBD devices are using statically allocated minor numbers, which
+      will be assigned to existing instances during the migration
+      process
+    - there is support for both Xen PVM and Xen HVM instances running on
+      the same cluster
+    - KVM virtualization is supported too
+    - file-based storage has been implemented, which means that it is
+      possible to run the cluster without LVM and DRBD storage, for
+      example using a shared filesystem exported from shared storage
+      (and still have live migration)
+
+Version 1.2.7
+  - Change the default reboot type in gnt-instance reboot to "hard"
+  - Reuse the old instance mac address by default on instance import,
+    if the instance name is the same.
+  - Handle situations in which the node info rpc returns incomplete results
+    (issue 46)
+  - Add checks for tcp/udp ports collisions in gnt-cluster verify
+  - Improved version of batcher:
+    - state file support
+    - instance mac address support
+    - support for HVM clusters/instances
+  - Add an option to show the number of cpu sockets and nodes in gnt-node list
+  - Support OSes that handle more than one version of the OS api
+    (but do not change the current API in any other way)
+  - Fix gnt-node migrate
+  - gnt-debug man page
+  - Fixes various more typos&small issues
+  - Increase disk resync maximum speed to 60MB/s (from 30MB/s)
+
+Version 1.2.6
+  - new --hvm-nic-type and --hvm-disk-type flags to control the type of disk
+    exported to fully virtualized instances.
+  - provide access to the serial console of HVM instances
+  - instance auto_balance flag, set by default. If turned off it will avoid
+    warnings on cluster verify if there is not enough memory to fail over an
+    instance. in the future it will prevent automatically failing it over when
+    we will support that.
+  - batcher tool for instance creation, see /tools/README.batcher
+  - gnt-instance reinstall --select-os to interactively select a new operating
+    system when reinstalling an instance.
+  - when changing the memory amount on instance modify a check has been added
+    that the instance will be able to start. also warnings are emitted if the
+    instance will not be able to fail over, if auto_balance is true.
+  - documentation fixes
+  - sync fields between instance list/modify/add/import
+  - fix a race condition in drbd when the sync speed was set after giving the
+    device a remote peer.
+
+Version 1.2.5
+  - note: the allowed size and number of tags per object were reduced
+  - fix a bug in β€œgnt-cluster verify” with inconsistent volume groups
+  - fixed twisted 8.x compatibility
+  - fixed gnt-instance replace-disks with iallocator
+  - add TCP keepalives on twisted connections to detect restarted nodes
+  - disk increase support, see β€œgnt-instance grow-disk”
+  - implement bulk node/instance query for RAPI
+  - add tags in node/instance listing (optional)
+  - experimental migration (and live migration) support, read the man
+    page for β€œgnt-instance migrate”
+  - the ganeti-watcher logs are now timestamped, and the watcher also
+    has some small improvements in handling its state file
+
+Version 1.2.4
+  - Experimental readonly, REST-based remote API implementation; automatically
+    started on master node, TCP port 5080, if enabled by --enable-rapi
+    parameter to configure script.
+  - Instance allocator support. Add and import instance accept a --iallocator
+    parameter, and call that instance allocator to decide which node to use for
+    the instance. The iallocator document describes what's expected from an
+    allocator script.
+  - gnt-cluster verify N+1 memory redundancy checks: Unless passed the
+    --no-nplus1-mem option gnt-cluster verify now checks that if a node is lost
+    there is still enough memory to fail over the instances that reside on it.
+  - gnt-cluster verify hooks: it is now possible to add post-hooks to
+    gnt-cluster verify, to check for site-specific compliance. All the hooks
+    will run, and their output, if any, will be displayed. Any failing hook
+    will make the verification return an error value.
+  - gnt-cluster verify now checks that its peers are reachable on the primary
+    and secondary interfaces
+  - gnt-node add now supports the --readd option, to readd a node that is still
+    declared as part of the cluster and has failed.
+  - gnt-* list commands now accept a new -o +field way of specifying output
+    fields, that just adds the chosen fields to the default ones.
+  - gnt-backup now has a new "remove" command to delete an existing export from
+    the filesystem.
+  - New per-instance parameters hvm_acpi, hvm_pae and hvm_cdrom_image_path have
+    been added. Using them you can enable/disable acpi and pae support, and
+    specify a path for a cd image to be exported to the instance. These
+    parameters as the name suggest only work on HVM clusters.
+  - When upgrading an HVM cluster to Ganeti 1.2.4, the values for ACPI and PAE
+    support will be set to the previously hardcoded values, but the (previously
+    hardcoded) path to the CDROM ISO image will be unset and if required, needs
+    to be set manually with gnt-instance modify after the upgrade..
+  - The address to which an instance's VNC console is bound is now selectable
+    per-instance, rather than being cluster wide. Of course this only applies
+    to instances controlled via VNC, so currently just applies to HVM clusters.
+
 Version 1.2.3
   - more tweaks to the disk activation code (especially helpful for DRBD)
   - change the default β€˜gnt-instance list’ output format, now there is