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Efficient Proxmox Cluster Deployment through Automation with Ansible

Manually setting up and managing servers is usually time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale. This becomes especially evident during large-scale rollouts, when building complex infrastructures, or during the migration from other virtualization environments. In such cases, traditional manual processes quickly reach their limits. Consistent automation offers an effective and sustainable solution to these challenges.

Proxmox is a powerful virtualization platform known for its flexibility and comprehensive feature set. When combined with Ansible, a lightweight and agentless automation tool, the management of entire system landscapes becomes significantly more efficient. Ansible allows for the definition of reusable configurations in the form of playbooks, ensuring that deployment processes are consistent, transparent, and reproducible.

To enable fully automated deployment of Proxmox clusters, our team member, known in the open-source community under the alias gyptazy, has developed a dedicated Ansible module called proxmox_cluster. This module handles all the necessary steps to initialize a Proxmox cluster and add additional nodes. It has been officially included in the upstream Ansible Community Proxmox collection and is available for installation via Ansible Galaxy starting with version 1.1.0. As a result, the manual effort required for cluster deployment is significantly reduced. Further insights can be found in his blog post titled “How My BoxyBSD Project Boosted the Proxmox Ecosystem“.

By adopting this solution, not only can valuable time be saved, but a solid foundation for scalable and low-maintenance infrastructure is also established. Unlike fragile task-based approaches that often rely on Ansible’s shell or command modules, this solution leverages the full potential of the Proxmox API through a dedicated module. As a result, it can be executed in various scopes and does not require SSH access to the target systems.

This automated approach makes it possible to deploy complex setups efficiently while laying the groundwork for stable and future-proof IT environments. Such environments can be extended at a later stage and are built according to a consistent and repeatable structure.

Benefits

Using the proxmox_cluster module for Proxmox cluster deployment brings several key advantages to modern IT environments. The focus lies on secure, flexible, and scalable interaction with the Proxmox API, improved error handling, and simplified integration across various use cases:

• Use of the native Proxmox API
• Full support for the Proxmox authentication system
  • API Token Authentication support
• No SSH access required
• Usable in multiple scopes:
  • From a dedicated deployment host
  • From a local system
  • Within the context of the target system itself
• Improved error handling through API abstraction

Ansible Proxmox Module: proxmox_cluster

The newly added proxmox_cluster module in Ansible significantly simplifies the automated provisioning of Proxmox VE clusters. With just a single task, it enables the seamless creation of a complete cluster, reducing complexity and manual effort to a minimum.

Creating a Cluster

Creating a cluster requires now only a single task in Ansible by using the proxmox_cluster module:

- name: Create a Proxmox VE Cluster
  community.proxmox.proxmox_cluster:
    state: present
    api_host: proxmoxhost
    api_user: root@pam
    api_password: password123
    api_ssl_verify: false
    link0: 10.10.1.1
    link1: 10.10.2.1
    cluster_name: "devcluster"

Afterwards, the cluster is created and additional Proxmox VE nodes can join the cluster.

Joining a Cluster

Additional nodes can now also join the cluster using a single task. When combined with the use of a dynamic inventory, it becomes easy to iterate over a list of nodes from a defined group and add them to the cluster within a loop. This approach enables the rapid deployment of larger Proxmox clusters in an efficient and scalable manner.

- name: Join a Proxmox VE Cluster
  community.proxmox.proxmox_cluster:
    state: present
    api_host: proxmoxhost
    api_user: root@pam
    api_password: password123
    master_ip: "{{ primary_node }}"
    fingerprint: "{{ cluster_fingerprint }}"
    cluster_name: “devcluster"

Cluster Join Informationen

In order for a node to join a Proxmox cluster, the cluster’s join information is generally required. To avoid defining this information manually for each individual cluster, this step can also be automated. As part of this feature, a new module called cluster_join_info has been introduced. It allows the necessary data to be retrieved automatically via the Proxmox API and made available for further use in the automation process.

- name: List existing Proxmox VE cluster join information
  community.proxmox.proxmox_cluster_join_info:
    api_host: proxmox1
    api_user: root@pam
    api_password: "{{ password | default(omit) }}"
    api_token_id: "{{ token_id | default(omit) }}"
    api_token_secret: "{{ token_secret | default(omit) }}"
  register: proxmox_cluster_join

Conclusion

While automation in the context of virtualization technologies is often focused on the provisioning of guest systems or virtual machines (VMs), this approach demonstrates that automation can be applied at a much deeper level within the underlying infrastructure. It is also possible to fully automate scenarios in which nodes are initially deployed using a customer-specific image with Proxmox VE preinstalled, and then proceed to automatically create the cluster.

As an official Proxmox partner, we are happy to support you in implementing a comprehensive automation strategy tailored to your environment and based on Proxmox products. You can contact us at any time!