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Setting up a Cluster With Proxmox

Clustering is a technique to group multiple machines or devices providing standard parameters, such as storage, over all machines in the cluster. Proxmox can be clustered to provide a standard interface to control all machines in the cluster.

Automatic failover of machines can also be achieved with a Proxmox cluster. However, this requires significant setup and is not available out of the box. I will discuss VM failover in a future blog post.

Create a new Cluster

To join one or more nodes to a Proxmox cluster, we must first create a cluster on one of the machines. Run the below command on your first Proxmox node and replace [CLUSTER_NAME] with a name for your cluster.

pvecm create [CLUSTER_NAME]

Check the status of a Cluster

Once a cluster is created, you can check the status using the status command.

pvecm status

You can use the nodes command to view all nodes in the cluster.

pvecm nodes

Add a new Node to the cluster

Adding a new node to a Proxmox cluster is easy and only requires the hostname or IP address of the primary cluster node. Using a hostname or DNS entry over an IP address is highly recommended to shield any IP address changes.

On a non-clustered node, login, run the pvecm add command and specify the IP address or hostname. You can use the IP address or hostname of any already clustered Proxmox node.

pvecm add [HOSTNAME_OF_CLUSTER]

It would be best if you did not have any virtual machines/ OpenVZ containers running on the node you added to the cluster. To ensure compatibility, all nodes should also run identical component versions of Proxmox.