vSAN manual failover to avoid split brain
Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2022 9:10 am
I am speccing out a starwind vs S2D vs stretch cluster. We currently use an MS hyper-v stretch cluster with 4 computer servers and 2 storage sans split into two physical buildings. I am looking to retire this in favour of 3 storage/compute servers (HCI single box) be they in S2D or starwind configuration - these with be split with two physical boxes in the primary site and one box in the secondary site .
One of the remaining questions is split brain functionality. Our current stretch cluster is in two physical buildings connected by a pair of 10Gb operating in failover mode (only one 10gb used for traffic at any one time so not teamed as such). Primary site nodes have a vote each on the cluster plus a quorum NAS share. Secondary site nodes have no vote so cannot bring the cluster up on their own without manual intervention. This prevents split brain should the pair of links go down (quorum NAS and internet link is on the primary site network). VMs are currently running on the primary site nodes.
Does starwind have the capability to remove a vote from its storage replication node - i.e I dont want the secondary site taking any "ownership" decisions unless I manually deem so? I know I can set the microsoft portion of hyper- v clustering "vote" for the secondary site but what about the vsan storage replication? Should the secondary link go down I do not want the secondary site to take over automatically in any way. Quorum NAS will remain in the primary site. VMs will only be running on primary site hyper-v nodes with no affinity to the secondary node (and no vote on the secondary cluster hyper-v node)
Incidentally, Primary site compute/storage servers will be directly connected to each other AND the quorum NAS, this will be for iscsi, heartbeat and quorum etc. The third secondary site node will be via the same 10Gb links (via switches) and thus prone to link power failure.
One of the remaining questions is split brain functionality. Our current stretch cluster is in two physical buildings connected by a pair of 10Gb operating in failover mode (only one 10gb used for traffic at any one time so not teamed as such). Primary site nodes have a vote each on the cluster plus a quorum NAS share. Secondary site nodes have no vote so cannot bring the cluster up on their own without manual intervention. This prevents split brain should the pair of links go down (quorum NAS and internet link is on the primary site network). VMs are currently running on the primary site nodes.
Does starwind have the capability to remove a vote from its storage replication node - i.e I dont want the secondary site taking any "ownership" decisions unless I manually deem so? I know I can set the microsoft portion of hyper- v clustering "vote" for the secondary site but what about the vsan storage replication? Should the secondary link go down I do not want the secondary site to take over automatically in any way. Quorum NAS will remain in the primary site. VMs will only be running on primary site hyper-v nodes with no affinity to the secondary node (and no vote on the secondary cluster hyper-v node)
Incidentally, Primary site compute/storage servers will be directly connected to each other AND the quorum NAS, this will be for iscsi, heartbeat and quorum etc. The third secondary site node will be via the same 10Gb links (via switches) and thus prone to link power failure.