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Re: VSA 2 Node Cluster + FOM

 
Garth Horsburgh
Occasional Advisor

VSA 2 Node Cluster + FOM

Hello, I am trying to eliminate the need to have the FOM on a third physical machine, is it possible for example to run the FOM as a virtual machine on the VSA cluster, then enable vsphere fault tolerance on it? if one of my nodes fails will FT activate the secondary fom in time to keep quorum and allow vmware HA to failover the rest of my vm's?
3 REPLIES 3
PCrid
Advisor

Re: VSA 2 Node Cluster + FOM

We thought about this one with two physical nodes and a vSphere cluster. In teh end we did use the FOM as a VSA but disabled HA/FT on it and had the FOM on manual restart.

The problem with enabling HA/FT is that you run a very serious risk of 'split brain' with it. Say cluster node A loses contact with node B, then node B will spin up your FOM and the B VSA/B FOM will have quorum. But as A is still running but not talking to B, it will still have a FOM running and will also have quorum. Hence both nodes will function independantly, resulting in a potential split brain.

Also, we ran with the FOM on seperate mirrored SAN hardware. If you're talking about running the FOM from the VSA itself, then that's a whole other rats nest of issues, and I'm pretty sure thats not advised either.
PCrid
Advisor

Re: VSA 2 Node Cluster + FOM

Sorry, correction... we ran the FOM as a VM, not (obviously) as a VSA.
Jitun
HPE Pro

Re: VSA 2 Node Cluster + FOM

No, FOM should not be on the SAN.
When the Host with the FOM goes down, your SAN will go down.

It is best to run it on a 3rd unit.
It can be run off a VMplayer which is free..
I work for HPE
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