Part 6 – Creating an HVM cluster

With the Manager is set up, the next is creating the HVM cluster which is the equivalent of building a vSphere cluster and adding hosts to it and before that we that we need to create a group and also a Cloud as shown below which are just basically some containers.

Infrastructure Groups are the way Morpheus organises resources so Go to Infrastructure → Groups > Create one if none exists, e.g. lab.

Provide all inputs and Click Save

Name: lab
Code: optional. It’s a short ID used in the API and automation, so lab is fine, or leave it empty.
Labels: optional; leave it empty.
Location: London

A Cloud is onnection to a platform where workloads run, much like a datacenter object in vCenter. HVM cloud will hold our VME clusters and later we add a VMware Cloud for vCenter and both will appear side by side.

Go to Infrastructure → Clouds, then click + Add

Choose Private Cloud – Morpheus and Click Next

Under this section provide details for our cluster

Name: lon-hvm
Code: lon-hvm. It’s optional, but handy for the API.
Labels: empty.
Location: London.
Enabled:
Automatically power on VMs: VMs that are meant to be running get started again after a host or cluster restart.
Inventory existing instances: This option is used for import. This option matters later for the VMware cloud, where you want existing vCenter VMs pulled in.

Click Next to Continue

Choose the Group to put it in so here we pick our Lab Group

Review and Click Complete

The Cloud is now ready and will take some time to initialize

Next step is now we can create a cluster

Creating a HVM Cluster

Once the VM Essentials manager is configured, you are ready to create your HVM cluster.

Go to Infrastructure – Clusters and click + Add Cluster.

Select HVM as the cluster type and click Next.

Choose Group as Lab

Give the cluster a name and, optionally, enter a description and any label to identify it.

In this section we need to provide all information of our existing hosts .

hvm-n1 runs the Manager VM, and it’s normal for that host to be in the cluster it manages.

Layout: HVM 1.3 Cluster on HVM/Ubuntu 24.04
SSH Hosts: 172.16.11.71, 172.16.11.72, 172.16.11.73
SSH Port: 22
SSH Username: hvmadmin
SSH Password: your hvmadmin password
SSH Key: empty
DNS Server: 172.16.11.5
Search Domain: lab.internal
NTP Server: 172.16.11.1
CPU Type: x86_64
CPU Model: leave it as “host-passthrough” unless your cluster nodes have different CPU families each. The same idea as EVC)
Dynamic Placement: On (VME’s DRS)
Placement Profile: Conservative
vCPU Placement: Unmanaged
Power Policy: Balanced
Witness Worker: empty (only for 2-node clusters)

Additionally, we can provide proxy and secondary dns in this section if required

Auto Concurrency: On
Migration Concurrency: 2. With Auto on, this acts as the upper limit; it keeps the nested lab from flooding its shared virtual links during maintenance mode.

This is like vMotion’s per-host concurrency limits. When a host enters maintenance mode, Morpheus decides how many VMs to move at once. In production with 10/25 Gb migration links, leave Auto on and raise the cap if required