[SOLVED] Is there a way to enable HA by default for all new VMs in a cluster?

[pulipulichen]

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for a way to make HA the default behavior for newly created VMs in a Proxmox VE cluster.

Coming from a VMware environment, I’m used to HA being enabled at the cluster level. In that model, VMs in the cluster are generally protected by HA by default, and individual VMs can be configured as exceptions if HA is not required.

What I’m looking for in Proxmox VE is something similar to:

Cluster
├─ VM 100 → HA enabled by default
├─ VM 101 → HA enabled by default
├─ VM 102 → HA enabled by default
└─ VM 103 → HA disabled as an exception

As far as I understand, Proxmox VE currently uses a per-resource model, where each VM has to be explicitly added as an HA resource, for example:

ha-manager add vm:100

I know this could be handled through scripts or API calls as part of the VM provisioning workflow, but I’m wondering if there is already a more native way to configure this at the cluster level.

For example:

Enable HA by default for every newly created VM in a specific cluster
Allow individual VMs to opt out of HA when necessary
Avoid having to explicitly add every new VM as an HA resource

I found some older discussions about automatically adding new VMs to HA, as well as references to Feature Request #1083, but I’m not sure whether anything has changed in recent PVE versions.

Has anyone implemented something similar in a larger Proxmox environment?

Or is the recommended approach still to add the VM to HA through the API / automation workflow after VM creation?

Also, does anyone know whether a cluster-level “HA by default” policy has been discussed or considered for future PVE versions?

Thanks!

 

[Johannes S]

I would create a template without disc's and all settings, afterwards clone it for the new vm.

For feature requests https://bugzilla.proxmox.com might have already one, otherwise feel free to create one.

 

[pulipulichen]

I would create a template without disc's and all settings, afterwards clone it for the new vm.

For feature requests https://bugzilla.proxmox.com might have already one, otherwise feel free to create one.

Thanks, Johannes.

I found that a similar feature request has already been opened:

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=7893

It seems to cover exactly the cluster-wide option to automatically add newly created guests as HA resources.

Looking forward to seeing how this develops in future PVE releases.