You have four servers that run Windows Server 2012 R2.
The servers have the Failover Clustering feature installed.
You deploy a new cluster named Cluster1.
Cluster1 is configured as shown in the following table.
Site2 is a disaster recovery site. Server1, Server2, and Server3 are configured as the preferred
owners of the cluster roles. Dynamic quorum management is disabled.
You plan to perform hardware maintenance on Server3.
You need to ensure that if the WAN link between Site1 and Site2 fails while you are performing
maintenance on Server3, the cluster resource will remain available in Site1.
What should you do?
A.
Enable dynamic quorum management.
B.
Remove the node vote for Server3.
C.
Add a file share witness in Site1.
D.
Remove the node vote for [C1] Server4 and Server5.
Explanation:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh270280.aspx#VotingandNonVotingNodes
D.
Remove the node vote for [C1] Server4 and Server5.
But if you remove the votes from S4 and S5 and dynamic quorum is not configured, wouldn’t that cause the Cluster to fail when S3 goes into maintenance?
Current situation > 5 nodes = 5 votes
Remove S3 and S4 > 3 votes
S3 enters maintenance > 2 votes => quorum lost
If you configure a file share witness, you will not lose quorum when S3 goes into MM, so I tend to think the answer is maybe C? Or even A?
Nevermind, it cannot be C because the file share witness must be configured in Site2. However I still don’t get why not simply enabling Dynamic Quorum.
Here I am again reviewing this question and it appears that my node vote calculation is off.
The formula, according to CBT Nuggets is N = ROUND(N/2) – 1 where N is the total number of votes in the cluster.
What you do is you take the number of nodes you have – if we go for option D it means we’re left with 3 total votes. To calculate quorum you divide that number in half, which is 1.5. Then you take 1.5 and you round up. So that actually gives us 2.0 here, and then you subtract one. And that leaves us with 1. What this is telling us is, how many nodes can I lose in my cluster and still have the cluster in operation? Answer: 1 in a 3 votes configuration.
So if we remove the votes from the second site, we still have quorum even if Server3 goes offline.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh270280.aspx#RecommendedAdjustmentstoQuorumVoting
So I guess the answer is indeed D… the strugle is real.