Compared to VMware, to create a Proxmox cluster you don’t need a dedicated appliance to centralize the management of resources such as CPU, RAM, storage and networking.
The cluster is at the node level and can be managed by any node since it is a multimaster cluster (no master-slave nodes).
To ensure a consistent configuration across all cluster nodes (the cluster configuration is distributed to all nodes), Proxmox uses a quorum-based voting mechanism leveraging the Corosync cluster engine.
Compared to VMware, to create a Proxmox cluster you don’t need a dedicated appliance to centralize the management of resources such as CPU, RAM, storage and networking.
The cluster is at the node level and can be managed by any node since it is a multimaster cluster (no master-slave nodes).
To ensure a consistent configuration across all cluster nodes (the cluster configuration is distributed to all nodes), Proxmox uses a quorum-based voting mechanism leveraging the Corosync cluster engine.
Create a Proxmox cluster
To create a Proxmox cluster you need two or more ready nodes. It is recommended to add at least three nodes to the cluster to ensure the correct cluster functionality in case of a node failure. With a two nodes cluster, if a node fails the cluster loses the quorum (quorum exists if the majority of nodes are online) and switches to read-only mode affecting the functionality.
Login to the first node and select Datacenter > Cluster. Click on the Create Cluster button.
Enter the Cluster Name and select a link for the Cluster Network. If you need additional links used as failover, click Add and specify the required parameters. Click Create to proceed with cluster creation.
The cluster is being created. Click X to close the window.
The created Proxmox cluster.
Add cluster members
Before adding a node to the cluster, make sure no VMs are running on the node.
To add a node to the cluster you need to copy the information from the node where the cluster was created. Select Datacenter > Cluster and click Join Information.
Click Copy Information and close the window.
Now connect the second node and select Datacenter > Cluster and click Join Cluster.
Paste the Join Information previously copied and type the root password in the Password field. Click Join “cluster_name” (cluster01 in the example).
The node is being added to the cluster.
Refresh the browser and login once again. The cluster now displays the two node members.
Repeat the same procedure if you have other nodes to add to the cluster. In the example, three nodes have been added to the cluster.
Once the cluster configuration is complete, you can migrate the installed VMs to the available nodes.
Test the storage
To test if the NFS storage works as expected, try to upload for example an ISO file to the configured storage.
From Proxmox, select the storage from a node (nfs_storage01 in the example) and click ISO Images (option available only if ISO file was specified in the Content field during the storage setup) then click Upload to select the ISO file to upload.
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