Cloud witness

To orchestrate a quorum in a stretched cluster, a tie-breaker vote, often called a witness, is required. A dynamic quorum ensures that preferred sites survive if network connectivity fails. Using a dynamic quorum, weighting is decreased from the passive (replicated) site first to ensure that the preferred site survives if all other things are equal. In addition, server nodes are pruned from the passive site first during regrouping after events such as an asymmetric network connectivity failure. During a quorum split across two sites, if the cluster witness cannot be contacted, the preferred site is automatically elected. The server nodes in the passive site then drop out of cluster membership. This scenario allows the cluster to survive a simultaneous 50 percent loss of votes. The preferred site can also be configured at the cluster role or group level. In this case, a different preferred site can be configured for each VM group. This enables a site to be active and preferred for specific VMs.