To cluster 2 pve Servers at my Hoster or not ?

adoII

Renowned Member
Jan 28, 2010
174
17
83
A customer has 2 Servers at Hetzner in 2 Different IP subnets and in 2 Different Datacenters and asked me to modernize them.
I would install a proxmox pve distribution on each server.

Does someone have experiences if it is a good idea to cluster the servers in a pve cluster ? I could easily create a vlan and a private address range so that the servers will be in the same logical network. But I expect at least some network latencies / outages over time.

The benefit of the cluster is not that big. It is a little easier to manage but since there is no shared storage anyway and we do not extend to migrate vms it does not make a big difference.

Also it should be no problem to cluster the servers via private ip addresses and manage them using the webinterface on public ip addresses, right ?

If I cluster the 2 machines and then find out that it was not a good idea to do so, ist there an easy way to "decluster" the servers again ?
 
Does someone have experiences if it is a good idea to cluster the servers in a pve cluster ?
Depends on which Hetzner Datacenter, i.e., the distance or better said latency between those two nodes.
If it's below ~ 10ms you could think about it, else the cluster may not be stable...

The benefit of the cluster is not that big. It is a little easier to manage but since there is no shared storage anyway and we do not extend to migrate vms it does not make a big difference.
IMO it makes it quite easier to manage than with two, but only if it's stable. For two nodes in different DCs I'd also recommend adding a QDevice on some external, unrelated host/vps/RPi/... to ensure that if one DC has problems the other node still is quorate.
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvecm.html#_corosync_external_vote_support

Also it should be no problem to cluster the servers via private ip addresses and manage them using the webinterface on public ip addresses, right ?
No, that's not an issue, the API and the cluster stack are two complete different services.

If I cluster the 2 machines and then find out that it was not a good idea to do so, ist there an easy way to "decluster" the servers again ?
Well, it's documented and normally works out ok, but it's not "just press a button" easy:
https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-pvecm.html#pvecm_separate_node_without_reinstall
 

About

The Proxmox community has been around for many years and offers help and support for Proxmox VE, Proxmox Backup Server, and Proxmox Mail Gateway.
We think our community is one of the best thanks to people like you!

Get your subscription!

The Proxmox team works very hard to make sure you are running the best software and getting stable updates and security enhancements, as well as quick enterprise support. Tens of thousands of happy customers have a Proxmox subscription. Get yours easily in our online shop.

Buy now!