Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to create a Cluster object

We’ve shown you how to create a vSphere Datacenter object, next we are going to create a cluster object. Again, this is fairly straight forward:

• Click on “Create a Cluster” in your “Getting Started” tab.
• Provide a name for your cluster and tick “Turn On” for both “DRS” and “vSphere HA”.
• Click “OK”.

We will not tweak any settings around HA and DRS, the defaults should work for most, although I would prefer to use the “Percentage Based” admission control policy. For more details I would like to recommend reading the vSphere 5.1 Clustering Deepdive.Now that your cluster has been created we can add our hosts to the cluster and really start configuring them.

• Right click your cluster object and select “Add a host”.
  
• Enter the fully qualified domain name or the IP address, we recommend using the domain name, and click “Next”.
• Enter the username and password that you configured for the host and click “Next”.
• Accept the “Security Alert” by clicking “Yes”.
  
• Click “Next” on the “Host summary” section.
• Assign licenses if available and click “Next”.
• Leave “Enable lockdown mode” un-ticked and click “Next”.
• Click “Next” on the “Resource pool” section.
• Click “Finish”

Repeat this procedure for the remaining hosts. Simple right!