After installing the first NSX Controller in your NSX-T 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.

Prerequisites

  • Install at least one NSX Controller.

  • Join the NSX Controller with the management plane.

  • Choose 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 command and enter 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.