Proxmox Cluster QDevice Raspberry Pi

In the video below, we show you how to setup a qdevice for a Proxmox cluster

A cluster needs at least 2 voting servers for activity and so you should have a minimum of 3 servers in the cluster in case one becomes unavailable

If you only had two nodes and one failed, you will find certain things don’t work including being able to login to the cluster

Proxmox allows you to setup what is known as a qdevice and add this into your cluster instead of a third node

Basically it just provides the extra vote needed

The qdevice needs to run Debian and this could be something as simple as a Raspberry Pi or a VM on a NAS for instance

This is very useful if you only need 2 nodes in a Proxmox cluster to provide redundancy for your VMs, because it can save wasting money on a third server which would likely do nothing more than just vote

Hardware Suggestions:
GeekPi Raspberry Pi 4 4GB

Steps Taken

1. Set up qdevice e.g. Raspberry Pi:
   Install the corosync-qnetd package
    sudo apt install corosync-qnetd
   
   Allow root SSH Login
    sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
    PermitRootLogin yes
   
   NOTE: Although root access via SSH isn’t recommended, Proxmox will use it’s root account to login to the qdevice and so the root passwords must also match
   Restart service
    sudo systemctl restart ssh
   
   Change root password
    sudo passwd root
   
   
2. Set up PVE Nodes:
   Install the corosync-qdevice package on all nodes
    apt install corosync-qdevice
   
   NOTE: All nodes in the cluster will need to be configured and online to do this
   
   
3. Add the qdevice
    pvecm qdevice setup ‘qdevice_ip_address’
   
   Where ‘qdevice_ip_address’ is the IP address of the qdevice we want to add
   As part of this, the ssh keys from the cluster will be copied over to the qdevice
   
   Check the results
    pvecm status

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