Failed to add first node to cluster

[Cebr]

Hello,

I had a proxmox-ve 8.2 instance for some time, let's call it [B]alpha[/B].mydomain.com
Alpha has been hardened (TFA+firewall) and has been running 10+ vm for some years now.

I just built a second node, let's call it [B]beta[/B].mydomain.com, running 8.3.
Both are connected on the same switch (RTT <1ms) .

rushing to create my first cluster I didn't saw the version mismatch at first.
While joining the cluster, beta complained about the TFA and asked me to go command line.
This failed as did my 3 other attempts (after updating both alpha and beta to the same version 8.3.2, disabling TFA and rebuilding beta from scratch).

The latest attempt went like this (but it was almost the same on every attempt):
on beta:

Establishing API connection with host [alpha IP]
Login succeeded
check cluster join API version
request addition of this node

in the background I can see this error message permission denied - invalid PVE ticket (401) and after 30s communication failure (0)
after that if I refresh my browser my let's encrypt certificate has disappeared and I'm left with the self signed one.
I can see both alpha and beta in the menu, both with a green tick
I can access both "summary" pages (which are updated), but most of the pages linked to beta are failing with a "loading screen"
"shell" to alpha is failing with root@X.X.X.X: Permission denied (publickey,password).

On alpha:
I can see both alpha and beta but only alpha has a green mark, beta has a grey question mark
in the cluster page I see an error message : '/etc/pve/nodes/beta/pve-ssl.pem' does not exist! (500)
I can connect to both alpha and beta shell
When trying to check the content of /etc/pve/nodes/beta I see that it is mostly empty. When trying to check /etc/pve/nodes/alpha the command hangs and I need to issue a Ctrl+C to regain control

On beta:
When trying to check the content of /etc/pve/nodes/alpha I see that it is mostly full. When trying to check /etc/pve/nodes/beta the command hangs and I need to issue a Ctrl+C to regain control

On alpha :
when checking beta summary, I get an error connection error 596 : error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed

after a few minutes, everything goes south, both alpha and beta become unresponsive and I need to shut down beta and issue a pvecm e 1 on alpha to regain control

Do you have any idea ?

Regards