Currently running a nuc 8i5 proxmox system with home assistant and 2 vms: windows 11 and Ventura. I have a nuc 7i5 sitting on a shelf unused. I’ve never run a cluster so I’m not sure how to implement one….and I’m not sure what having a second cpu would buy me. Should I add the nuc7…and how?
To clarify on the terminology: You’d be adding a second node to a cluster.
As to what it gives you: Going from 1 node to 2 nodes gives you some extra compute power to run your workloads. It does hower not increase reliability of the cluster, for that you’d need a minimum of three nodes. At that point you’ll have quorum, and will be able to take down any one node while still maintaining a quorum for cluster consistency. Quorum is half your nodes rounded up, so for 2 and 3 nodes the quorum is 2, for 4 and 5 nodes the quorum is 3, etc. In other words, a simple majority of nodes needs to be up for the cluster to be able to “vote”. Then you’ll be able to do fun things like load balancing, shared storage, etc.
As for how to add nodes to a cluster - here’s the documentation.