You extend a hyper-converged cluster by adding hosts and configuring their networking to match the cluster configuration.

Note: If you modify any cluster networking settings outside of Quickstart, you cannot use the Quickstart workflow to add and configure new hosts to the cluster.

Prerequisites

  • You have already created a cluster and added hosts to it.
  • In the initial cluster configuration, you configured the host networking.
  • Verify that hosts have the same ESXi version and patch level.
  • Obtain the user name and password of the root user account for the host.
  • Verify that hosts do not have a manual vSAN or networking configuration.

Procedure

  1. Navigate to Home > Hosts and Clusters and select a configured cluster.
  2. Right-click the cluster and select Add Hosts.
  3. From the Add hosts wizard, add new and existing hosts from the vCenter Server inventory.
    The Cluster quickstart page appears.
  4. In the Configure cluster card, select Configure.
  5. (Optional) If the vSphere DRS feature is enabled on the cluster, configure the networking options in the vMotion traffic page.
    1. (Optional) Select a protocol type from the drop-down menu.
    2. (Optional) Populate the text boxes for each host in the cluster depending on the IP address type you need for setting up the networking.
      If the IP address type is set to DHCP, these text boxes are dimmed.
  6. Click Next.
    The Ready to complete page appears.
  7. Review the settings and select Finish.
    The card closes and the progress of the operation appears in the Recent Tasks tab.

Results

After successful validation, your newly added hosts are configured as the existing hosts in your cluster and the Configure button in the Configure hosts card becomes inactive. You can only click Re-validate to verify the cluster configuration.

What to do next

Add more hosts to the cluster.