In this post I\u2019m going to talk about building a 2 node Windows Server 2012\/R2 failover cluster and what type of witness configuration to choose to achieve cluster quorum when the cluster\u2019s storage is a JBOD with Storage Spaces.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been messing about in the lab with a WS2012 R2 cluster, in particular, a Scale-Out File Server (SOFS) running on a failover cluster with Storage Spaces on a JBOD. What I\u2019m discussing applies equally to:<\/p>\n
Consider the build process of this 2 node cluster:<\/p>\n
Hmm, no witness was created to break the vote and get an uneven result. In fact, what happens is that the cluster will rig the vote to ensure that there is an uneven result. If you\u2019ve got 2 just nodes in the cluster with no witness then one has a quorum vote and the other doesn\u2019t. Imagine Node1 has a vote and Node2 does not have a vote. Now Node1 goes offline for whatever reason. Node2 does not have a vote and cannot achieve quorum; you don\u2019t have a cluster until Node1 comes back online.<\/p>\n
There are 2 simple solutions to this:<\/p>\n
Create a file share on another highly available file server \u2013 uh \u2026 that\u2019ll be an issue for small\/medium business because all the virtual machines (including the file server) were going to be stored on the JBOD\/Storage Spaces. You can configure the file share as a witness for the cluster.<\/p>\n
Create a small virtual disk (2-way or 3-way mirror for JBOD fault tolerance) and use that disk for quorum as the witness disk. A 1 GB disk will do; the smallest my Storage Spaces implementation would do was 5 GB but that\u2019s such a small amount anyway. This solution is pretty what you\u2019d do in a single site cluster with traditional block storage.<\/p>\n
We could go crazy talking about quorum options in cluster engineering. I\u2019ve given you 2 simple options, with the virtual disk as a witness being the simplest. Now each node has a vote for quorum with a witness to break the vote, and the cluster can survive either node failing.<\/p>\n
In this post I\u2019m going to talk about building a 2 node Windows Server 2012\/R2 failover cluster and what type of witness configuration to choose to achieve cluster quorum when the cluster\u2019s storage is a JBOD with Storage Spaces. I\u2019ve been messing about in the lab with a WS2012 R2 cluster, in particular, a Scale-Out … Continue reading “Configuring Quorum on Storage Spaces For A 2 Node WS2012 (and WS2012 R2) Cluster”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[63,181,99,195,118,120],"class_list":["post-15340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hyper-v","tag-failover-clustering","tag-hyper-v","tag-storage","tag-virtualisation","tag-windows-server-2012","tag-windows-server-2012-r2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t