After installing the first NSX Controller in your NSX-T Data Center deployment, you can initialize the control cluster. Initializing the control cluster is required even if you are setting up a small proof-of-concept environment with only one controller node. If you do not initialize the control cluster, the controller is not able to communicate with the hypervisor hosts. In the cluster, you only need to initialize one controller.

Prerequisites

  • Install at least one NSX Controller.

  • Join the NSX Controller with the management plane.

  • Verify that you have admin privileges to log in to the NSX Controller appliance.

  • Assign a shared secret password. A shared secret password is a user-defined shared secret password (for example, "secret123").

Procedure

  1. Open an SSH session for your NSX Controller.
  2. Run the set control-cluster security-model shared-secret secret <secret> command and type a shared secret when prompted.
  3. Run the initialize control-cluster command.

    This command makes this controller the control cluster master.

    For example: 

    NSX-Controller1> initialize control-cluster 
Control cluster initialization successful.
  4. Run the get control-cluster status verbose command.

    Verify that is master and in majority are true, the status is active, and the Zookeeper Server IP is reachable, ok. 

    nsx-controller1> get control-cluster status verbose
NSX Controller Status:

uuid: 78d5b561-4f66-488d-9e53-089735eac1c1
is master: true
in majority: true
uuid                                 address              status
78d5b561-4f66-488d-9e53-089735eac1c1 192.168.110.34       active

Cluster Management Server Status:

uuid                                 rpc address          rpc port             global id            vpn address          status
557a911f-41fd-4977-9c58-f3ef55b3efe7 192.168.110.34       7777                 1                    169.254.1.1             connected

Zookeeper Ensemble Status:

Zookeeper Server IP: 10.0.0.1, reachable, ok
Zookeeper version: 3.5.1-alpha--1, built on 03/08/2016 01:18 GMT
Latency min/avg/max: 0/0/1841
Received: 212095
Sent: 212125
Connections: 5
Outstanding: 0
Zxid: 0x10000017a
Mode: leader
Node count: 33
Connections: /10.0.0.1:51726[1](queued=0,recved=60324,sent=60324,sid=0x100000f14a10003,lop=PING,est=1459376913497,to=30000,lcxid=0x8,lzxid=0x10000017a,lresp=604617273,llat=0,minlat=0,avglat=0,maxlat=1088)
 /10.0.0.1:35462[0](queued=0,recved=1,sent=0)
 /10.0.0.1:51724[1](queued=0,recved=45786,sent=45803,sid=0x100000f14a10001,lop=GETC,est=1459376911226,to=40000,lcxid=0x21e,lzxid=0x10000017a,lresp=604620658,llat=0,minlat=0,avglat=0,maxlat=1841)
 /10.0.0.1:51725[1](queued=0,recved=60328,sent=60333,sid=0x100000f14a10002,lop=PING,est=1459376913455,to=30000,lcxid=0xc,lzxid=0x10000017a,lresp=604618294,llat=0,minlat=0,avglat=0,maxlat=1356)
 /10.0.0.1:51730[1](queued=0,recved=45315,sent=45324,sid=0x100000f14a10006,lop=PING,est=1459376914516,to=40000,lcxid=0x49,lzxid=0x10000017a,lresp=604623243,llat=0,minlat=0,avglat=0,maxlat=1630)

What to do next

Add additional NSX Controllers to the control cluster. See Join Additional NSX Controllers with the Cluster Master.