[PVE-User] Multi Data Center Cluster or Not

[Arjen]

On Tuesday, April 27th, 2021 at 20:38, JR Richardson <jmr.richardson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm looking for suggestions for geo-diversity using PROXMOX
> Clustering. I understand running hypervisors in the same cluster in
> multiple data centers is possible with high capacity/low latency
> inter-site links. What I'm learning is there could be better ways,
> like running PROXMOX backup servers (PBS) with Remote Sync. Using PBS
> is interesting but would require manually restoring nodes should a
> failure occur.
>
> I'm looking for best practice or suggestions in topology that folks
> are using successfully or even tales of failure for what to avoid.

I haven't actually done this, so feel free to ignore this or inform me of problems with this approach:

Set-up multiple Proxmox systems/clusters, each in a separate data center but don't cluster them over the data centers.
Set-up a VPN that allows Proxmox and VMs in each data center to connect to the others. It does not need low latency.
Have a PBS VM on each of them and backup your VMs (many times a day, if you want) to the local PBS and sync all the PBSs.
Distribute the VMs manually over the different systems, so that the users have the lowest latency.
Leave room for more VMs, this makes then operate more smooth and would allow taking over load from other systems.
If a data center becomes unusable, restore the VMs that were running there on the other systems manually.

In case of problems, nothing will be automated and you'll lose work since the most recent available backup, but at least you know that you have several other working Proxmox systems/clusters up and running and capable of restoring and running the affected VMs.
The syncing of backups only depends on changes in the set of deduplicated chunks and does not need low latency or high speed.

kind regards, Arjen