How do you handle Proxmox clusters when you only have 1 or 2 servers?

I technically have 3 servers but I keep one offline because I don’t need it 24/7 most point wasting power on a server I don’t need.

I believe I read somewhere that you can force Proxmox it to a lower number but it isn’t recommended. Has anyone done this and if so have you run into any issues with this?

My main issue is I want my VM to start no matter what. For example I had a power outage. When the servers came back online instead of starting they waited for the quorum number to reach 3. (it will never reach 3 because the third server wasn’t turn on.) so they just waited forever until I got home and ran

pvecm expected 2

  • HybridSarcasm@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I would argue that the node shouldn’t be in the cluster if its availability doesn’t match the others. If you remove the part-time node, your pvecm concerns go away.

    Now, if you have a failure such that the other 2 nodes get restarted, you can manage the VM startups with delays. If one node completes booting 5 minutes before the other, then have the VMs wait 5 minutes or longer before auto-starting. That way, you’ll have your quorum when the VM starts.

    • Catsrules@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      I see what your saying, however I really like the ability to one click migrate VMs to and from it. As I use it mostly for when I need little extra RAM or a little extra CPU performance. I can just flip it on and migrate whatever VM over to it. All of my storage and backups are all pre setup.

  • Irisos@lemmy.umainfo.live
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    1 year ago

    If you are not using any HA feature and only put servers into the same cluster for ease of management.

    You could use the same command but with a value of 1.

    The reason quorum exist is to prevent any server to arbitrarily failover VMs when it believes the other node(s) is down and create a split brain situation.

    But if that risk does not exist to begin with, so do the quorum.

  • PrivateButts@geddit.social
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    1 year ago

    You’ll need a QDevice to keep consensus. That wiki article will cover how to set it up and some drawbacks to QDevices. You should be able to run it on a low-power device like a Pi to keep the cluster going.

  • MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    AFAIK forcing it to a lower number is fine if you’re not doing HA. I remember reading something along those lines on a forum, but I could be remembering wrong.

    If you’re not using Ceph or HA, then I don’t think there would be any negative effects from not having all the servers in the cluster ready.

  • Zoë@lemmy.mlM
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    1 year ago

    Please do add a tag to your post as stated on the sublemmy sidebar! Thank you. :)