Clusters, types & groups¶

A cluster is the compute that virtual machines run on - a vSphere cluster, a Proxmox cluster, or however you group your hypervisors. It's also where a VM's location comes from, so it's usually the only place you need to set a site.

Clusters¶

Field	What it's for
Name	The cluster's label.
Type	What kind of cluster it is (see below).
Group	Optional grouping across clusters.
Site	Where the cluster itself lives. Not inherited by its VMs unless you tick the option below.
Give VMs on this cluster its site	Opt-in: fills the cluster's site into VMs that have none.
Status	From your status catalog.
Description, tags	Notes and labels.

Its detail page lists the virtual machines on it (with a count on the tab) and its VM groups, plus Journal and Change log.

The Clusters list has SLA and Availability columns, read from the cluster's hosts: the agreements its hosts are in, and the checks on their addresses. See Service level agreements.

Site, and the VMs on it¶

A cluster's site describes the cluster. By default it is not inherited: a VM's site is its own field, and a VM with none simply has none even when its cluster has one.

That default is deliberate - the compute often lives in one datacentre while the workloads belong to the branch or department they serve, and that is what you want recorded.

Where the two really are the same place, tick Give VMs on this cluster its site:

Saving the cluster backfills VMs on it that have no site.
New VMs added to it - by hand or by a sync - get the site as they arrive.
It is blank-fill only: a site you set on a VM is never overwritten, and clearing the cluster's site later never clears the VMs'.
A site-scoped user can then see those VMs, so turn it on deliberately.

Either way, a site's own page has a Virtual machines tab, which answers both questions separately: Placed here (VMs whose own site is this one) and Hosted by clusters here (VMs running on a cluster at this site that carry no site of their own).

Cluster types¶

A cluster type records the platform: VMware vCenter, Proxmox VE, Hyper-V, KVM - whatever you run. It's an ordinary catalog with a name, slug and description, and it's yours to define: following the zero pre-filled data rule, none ship with the product.

A sync creates the one type it needs on demand - Proxmox VE, VMware vCenter or VMware Cloud Director - so importing works on a fresh install, and reuses it afterwards.

Cluster groups¶

A cluster group organises clusters into a tree - by region, environment or tenant of the platform, for example Production, Lab, DR. Like cluster types it's a name, slug and description, and it never gates access; it's navigation and reporting metadata only.

A Cloud Director sync creates one per organization, so the VDCs of one org sit together.

VM groups¶

A VM group is a set of virtual machines below a cluster - a Cloud Director vApp, a Proxmox resource pool, a vCenter folder, or one you make by hand. A cluster page's VM groups tab lists the cluster's groups; VM groups covers the list, the detail page, and what a sync may change.

Delete order

A cluster type or group that's still referenced can't be deleted. Move the clusters off it first.