Uploaded May 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Achieving Quorum in a Two Node Proxmox Cluster
In a Proxmox VE cluster, quorum is the minimum number of nodes that must be online and able to communicate with each other to make coordinated decisions and safely manage shared resources.
🔍 What Quorum Means in Proxmox
- Proxmox uses Corosync for cluster communication.
- Quorum ensures data consistency and split-brain prevention (where two nodes might think they own the same resource).
- Without quorum, the cluster disables key operations, such as starting or migrating VMs, to avoid corruption.
🧮 How Quorum Is Calculated
Quorum is based on the number of nodes in your cluster:
Quorum = (Total number of nodes / 2) + 1
In this video, we will maintain quorum by:
Editing the Configuration File:
- cp /etc/pve/corosync.conf /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf
- nano /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf
- Increase quorum votes to 2
- Increment the config version key in the totem section by 1
- mv /etc/pve/corosync.conf /etc/pve/corosync.conf.bak
- mv /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf /etc/pve/corosync.conf
If you really mess things up, it’s possible that the nodes won’t quorate. If this happens, the entire Proxmox cluster filesystem becomes read-only. You can temporarily reduce the required quorum to 1 to continue:
- pvecm expected 1.
⚠️ Important Notes:
- Two-node clusters are problematic without special configuration because you need both online at all times.
- To solve this, you can add a QDevice (a third quorum vote provider that doesn’t run VMs) or use external qnetd.
- Loss of quorum = “no quorum” status → cluster operations restricted (you may still force actions manually, but it's risky).
✅ Best Practices:
- Always have at least 3 nodes or 2 nodes + QDevice.
- Use redundant networking to prevent quorum loss from NIC failure.
- Avoid forcing actions when there's no quorum unless you fully understand the risk.
Links:
pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_corosync_configuration
💬 Have questions or got stuck during your migration? Drop a comment below – I respond to all questions!
👍 Like & Subscribe if this helped you – more Proxmox, virtualization, and homelab content is coming weekly!
🌸 Buy me a coffee :
buymeacoffee.com/liv4it
🌸 Support channel & make donation :
paypal.me/aminenina/10
🌸 Subscribe for more videos :
Youtube: youtube.com/user/aminosninatos
🌸 Follow me On Social Media
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***********************************************************************
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#Proxmox #quorum #Cluster
Achieving Quorum in a Two Node Proxmox Cluster
In a Proxmox VE cluster, quorum is the minimum number of nodes that must be online and able to communicate with each other to make coordinated decisions and safely manage shared resources.
🔍 What Quorum Means in Proxmox
- Proxmox uses Corosync for cluster communication.
- Quorum ensures data consistency and split-brain prevention (where two nodes might think they own the same resource).
- Without quorum, the cluster disables key operations, such as starting or migrating VMs, to avoid corruption.
🧮 How Quorum Is Calculated
Quorum is based on the number of nodes in your cluster:
Quorum = (Total number of nodes / 2) + 1
In this video, we will maintain quorum by:
Editing the Configuration File:
- cp /etc/pve/corosync.conf /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf
- nano /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf
- Increase quorum votes to 2
- Increment the config version key in the totem section by 1
- mv /etc/pve/corosync.conf /etc/pve/corosync.conf.bak
- mv /etc/pve/corosync.new.conf /etc/pve/corosync.conf
If you really mess things up, it’s possible that the nodes won’t quorate. If this happens, the entire Proxmox cluster filesystem becomes read-only. You can temporarily reduce the required quorum to 1 to continue:
- pvecm expected 1.
⚠️ Important Notes:
- Two-node clusters are problematic without special configuration because you need both online at all times.
- To solve this, you can add a QDevice (a third quorum vote provider that doesn’t run VMs) or use external qnetd.
- Loss of quorum = “no quorum” status → cluster operations restricted (you may still force actions manually, but it's risky).
✅ Best Practices:
- Always have at least 3 nodes or 2 nodes + QDevice.
- Use redundant networking to prevent quorum loss from NIC failure.
- Avoid forcing actions when there's no quorum unless you fully understand the risk.
Links:
pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/pve-admin-guide.html#_corosync_configuration
💬 Have questions or got stuck during your migration? Drop a comment below – I respond to all questions!
👍 Like & Subscribe if this helped you – more Proxmox, virtualization, and homelab content is coming weekly!
🌸 Buy me a coffee :
buymeacoffee.com/liv4it
🌸 Support channel & make donation :
paypal.me/aminenina/10
🌸 Subscribe for more videos :
Youtube: youtube.com/user/aminosninatos
🌸 Follow me On Social Media
Facebook : facebook.com/aminosninatos
***********************************************************************
🌸 Proxmox VM Migration In Cluster
youtu.be/T3A5WzW-KDc
🌸 Proxmox Clustering with 2 Nodes
youtu.be/0AB5sZccmpY
🌸 How To Passthrough Physical Network Cards NIC to VM like PFsense in Proxmox
youtu.be/kmd4l66Tr2g
🌸 How To Create a Simple Workflow On n8n World's Most Popular Automation Platform
youtu.be/zhxycn-rr1g
🌸 How to Create Google Credentials On The world's most popular workflow automation platform n8n
youtu.be/YfXT5h93CKo
🌸How To Install The world's most popular workflow automation platform n8n On Proxmox
youtu.be/J1cpJRuTHwE
🌸How To Install Uptime Kuma a Self Hosted Monitoring Application on Proxmox
youtu.be/cCxgkHd0E9Y
🌸How To Import a ESXI VM In Proxmox Virtual Environment
youtu.be/GJQTwfzh7iQ
🌸How To Setup Notifications On Proxmox With Gotify
youtu.be/Li0fnYtSh2s
🌸How To Install an SSL Certificate on Proxmox
youtu.be/lCkrsaDEiT4
🌸 How To Monitor Proxmox Using InfluxDB and Grafana
youtu.be/qWvcm5NzuCI
🌸 Proxmox Backup Server Backup & Restore Operations
youtu.be/RSXrE8uBOEM
🌸 How To Lower The Power Use of Proxmox Server
youtu.be/FJiEeHmiiH0
🌸 Proxmox VE Helper Scripts
youtu.be/gRVSbqXejtk
🌸 How to migrate Hyper-v vhdx VM to Proxmox qcow2
youtu.be/CoUVh9mDqFA
🌸How to Configure the Firewall on Proxmox
youtu.be/SnjBjU9irtg
🌸How to Configure SDN Software Defined Network on Proxmox
youtu.be/EinV4FqvCHA
🌸 How to Deploy LXC Container in Proxmox with Ansible
youtu.be/XdozKMndWdo
🌸 How To Install Packages on Proxmox VM with Terraform
youtu.be/RRJrLTeU67Y
🌸 How to deploy VMs in Proxmox with Terraform
youtu.be/wkoMcVBqjuI
🌸 How To Create Proxmox Cloud-init Templates
hyoutu.be/3TH7fBUAIxk
🌸 How to check ZFS File System Storage Pool on Proxmox
youtu.be/3mkP09SonD4
🌸 How to Fix Proxmox PVE can’t create ZFS pool
youtu.be/JtHzV2TXs6M
🌸 How to take Snapshots and run Backups on Proxmox
youtu.be/98WDxmvTkwY
🌸 How to Install Proxmox QEMU Guest Agent on Ubuntu
youtu.be/ZpEYkA4C4jY
***********************************************************************
#Proxmox #quorum #Cluster
