In part 1 of the virtual-proxmox series, we installed Proxmox on on a regular Linux desktop computer inside of KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine). In this post, we will do something similar, but this time we will install a virtual Proxmox inside of an existing Proxmox server, and then make a cluster of virtual Proxmoxen, all managed from one dashboard. This endeavour serves no practical production purpose, but may be very useful for testing and/or documentation, both of which are germane to this blog.

Upload the proxmox iso image

On your existing Proxmox server, open the dashboard:

• Click on the local storage (by default, or whatever storage you have that is tagged for ISO image use).
• Click ISO Images
• Click Upload and choose the proxmox-ve_8.0-2.iso (or similar) and upload it.

Create a new VM

• Right click on the proxmox server underneath the datacenter list.
• Click Create VM
• Give the VM a name: pve-test
• Choose the proxmox ISO image you uploaded
• Choose the disk size (default 32GB)
• Give it some cores (2) and some RAM (8192)
• Finalize the creation.

Install Proxmox in the VM

Start the VM and open the console and finish the installation of Proxmox. After rebooting, take note of the URL printed in the console, and open it in your web browser to access the virtual proxmox dashboard (https://x.x.x.x:8006). You must bypass the self-signed certiticate the first time you open it.

Create a Proxmox cluster

You can join both the native proxmox and the virtual proxmox together into one cluster, and this way you will be able to manage both instances under one dashboard.

• Open the dashboard on your native proxmox host
• Click on Datacenter
• Click Cluster
• Click Create Cluster
• Enter any name for the cluster (eg. name it after the home location, as you may want to add all the servers around your home to this same cluster)
• Finalize the creation of the cluster.
• Click Join information and copy the join information.

Join the virtual proxmox to the cluster

• Open the dashboard on your virtual proxmox instance
• Click on Datacenter
• Click Join Cluster
• Paste in the join information copied from the native dashboard
• Enter the root password of the host
• Click Join [cluster]

Now you will find the virtual instance has been populated on the native host’s dashboard. Find pve-test in the list under Datacenter.

Add additional storage to the virtual instance

Virtual hard drives are hot swappable, so you can simply create and attach as many virtual drives without needing to reboot.

• Click the pve-test VM on the host server.
• Click Hardware
• Click Add
• Click Hard Disk
• Choose the storage pool and the size
• Click Add to add the new disk.
• Repeat this process, to add a total of two new virtual disks.

Find the new disk automatically recognized on the pve-test instance:

• Under the Datacenter view, click pve-test
• Click on Disks
• See that the new disks are shown in the list
• Under Disks, click ZFS
• Click Create ZFS
• Enter the name: test
• Choose the RAID level: mirror
• Select both of the new drives available in the list.
• Click Create

Remove a node from the cluster

Log into the pve shell, run:

## List all the cluster nodes:
pvecm nodes

You should see two nodes, 1) your native proxmox host 2) the virtual proxmox host.

According to the documentation, here’s how you remove the node from the cluster:

• Backup / Move all the VMs and data (although you probably haven’t put anything important in there yet, so whatever).
• Shutdown and disable the pve-test VM from starting on boot.
• With one node missing from a two node cluster, you no longer have quruom to do most tasks. To regain quorum on the primary node, you must set the expected # of votes to 1, run:

## Regain quorum:
pvecm expected 1

• Remove the node from the cluster, run:

## Remove the node from the cluster:
pvecm delnode pve-test

It should say Killing node 2. The docs also say that you can safely ignore any error about Could not kill node (error = CS_ERR_NOT_EXIST), it is not really a failure.

• Refresh the dashboard, and the pve-test node should be now be gone.
• Click on Datacenter, and then Cluster, and you should see the cluster no longer shows the pve-test node.