Replacing a StarWind Node‑Majority Witness (PowerShell Only)

[stcompdude]

Hi all, I’m looking to confirm the supported way to replace a StarWind Node‑Majority witness using PowerShell only. This is a StarWind Virtual SAN (Free) environment with no GUI available.

The current setup is a three‑node Node Majority configuration with two data nodes (do-vmh1 and do-vmh2) and a witness node (do-backup1). All nodes are Windows Server, and all management is done through PowerShell.

What I need to do is move the witness role from do-backup1 to a new Windows server with a different hostname and IP. I’m not trying to change the failover strategy, rebuild the data nodes, or touch the data itself.

At this point, the only supported workflow I see is temporarily removing the witness so the HA device runs in Heartbeat mode, decommissioning the old witness server, building the new witness server, and then re‑adding the witness to restore Node Majority.

Is there any PowerShell‑only method to change the witness without recreating the HA device?

Thank you!

[yaroslav (staff)]

Welcome to StarWind Forum!
I will discuss the procedure internally. Is it SMB witness or is it a Witness node?
The only problem is that you can't revert it to Heartbeat mode. The devices will be in Node Majority, but without the witness. It is fine, but you must not restart any of the nodes until you are done with recreation.

I will return to this thread once I have a plan.

[stcompdude]

It is a witness node.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Hi,

Sadly, it is not possible; we could book a remote session to pull the change together. Please log a call with us https://www.starwindsoftware.com/support-form. Use 1454929 as your reference.

[agyya]

There is no supported PowerShell-only method to directly replace the witness in StarWind Virtual SAN (Free).

Supported approach:

Remove the current witness → HA switches to 2-node Heartbeat mode

Decommission the old witness server

Deploy the new witness server

Add it back to restore Node-Majority

No need to recreate the HA device, and no data rebuild is required.

[yaroslav (staff)]

Support tech is here.
Do not follow the guide above; it looks like someone's LLM galucinated. There's no way for now to recreate the witness with powershell. The feature request was logged; dev team is working on it.
There's no way to switch to Heartbeat from node majority other than editing swdsk. Does it make sense to do so? Depends on the network configuration.