How to Create a Proxmox Cluster

In this video, I walk through how to create a Proxmox VE cluster and join additional Proxmox servers to it using the web interface. Clustering is one of the most important capabilities to understand if you want to manage multiple Proxmox hosts from a single interface and get the environment ready for features like workload migration, shared storage, and high availability. For this step-by-step Proxmox cluster tutorial, I begin with three standalone Proxmox VE servers named pvetest01, pvetest02, and pvetest03. We use the first server to create a new cluster from Datacenter > Cluster, assign the cluster a name, and select the network interface that will carry Corosync cluster communications.

I also explain why a dedicated Corosync network is considered a best practice in a production Proxmox cluster. Although this demonstration uses a single management interface, separating cluster traffic helps avoid network contention and provides a better foundation for a reliable production environment. Once the cluster is created, we copy the automatically generated join information from the first node. We then paste that information into the Join Cluster dialog on the other two servers. We do this by providing the root password for the existing cluster node, and completing the join process.

The tutorial also shows why your current web session may temporarily display authentication errors after a node joins the cluster and why this behavior is expected. Finally, we reconnect to the Proxmox interface and confirm that all three nodes appear online with green status indicators. By the end of the video, you will know how to create a Proxmox VE cluster, add additional nodes, and manage every clustered host from any participating Proxmox node.