Use Quickstart to Extend a Cluster with Host Networking Configuration

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

• Verify that you have an existing cluster and hosts added 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 configuration or a manual networking configuration.
• To add a host to a cluster that you manage with a single image, see the Managing Host and Cluster Lifecycle documentation.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client home page, navigate to Home > Hosts and Clusters and select a configured cluster.
2. Right-click the cluster and select Add Hosts.
   The Add hosts wizard appears.
3. On the Add hosts page, add new or existing hosts to the cluster.
   • Add hosts that are not part of the vCenter Server inventory.
     1. Click the New hosts tab.
     2. Populate the IP Address and credentials text boxes for those hosts.
     3. (Optional) To add more new hosts, click the Add Host button.
     4. (Optional) To reuse the credentials for all added hosts, select the Use the same credentials for all hosts check box.
   • Add hosts that are managed by your vCenter Server instance and are in the same data center as your cluster.
     1. Click the Existing hosts tab.
     2. From the list, select the hosts that you want to add to the cluster.
4. Click Next.
   The Host summary page lists all hosts that will be added to the cluster and related warnings.

   Note: If a host cannot be validated automatically by the system, you are prompted to manually validate its certificate and accept its thumbprint in the Security Alert pop-up.
5. On the Host summary page, review the details of the added hosts and click Next.
6. (Optional) On the Import Image page, select the host whose image to use as the image for the cluster.
   The Import Image page appears when you add hosts to a cluster managed with a single image. For information about adding a host to a cluster that you manage with a single image, see the Managing Host and Cluster Lifecycle documentation.
7. On the Ready to complete page, review the IP addresses or FQDN of the added hosts and click Finish.
   The Extend Cluster Guide page appears.
8. In the Configure hosts card, select Configure.
9. If the vSphere DRS feature is enabled on the cluster, configure the networking options in the vMotion traffic page.
   1. (Optional) Select the Use VLAN check box and enter an ID for the vMotion distributed port group.
   2. (Optional) Select a protocol type from the drop-down menu.
   3. Select an IP type from the drop-down menu.
   4. (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.
10. Click Next.
    The Review page appears.
11. Review the settings and select Finish.
    The card closes, and the progress of the operation appears in the Recent Tasks pane.

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.