Two nodes quorum - no high availability - Two votes for one of the node - Is it ok ?

[Ztec]

Hello,

I have a two node cluster. I know, I know that is not ideal. I need the cluster for … reasons.
In this cluster I do not need high availability. If a node is down, it is down. I can live with that. (That is a home prod thing, not a corporate overlord thing that need 100% SLA)

On the two nodes, one is important, the other one is nice to have.
The goal is to be able to live with only the important one UP. But by default, qorum is required and the two nodes are required to be up to do anything. As the "nice to have" node does not startup automatically, the important one will get stuck when it boot up until I start the second one.

From what i've read over, I can set the number of votes per nodes, and changed that so that my important node get 2 votes, the other get only 1.

Membership information
----------------------
    Nodeid      Votes Name
         1          2 the-important-one (local)
         2          1 the-nice-to-have-one

What are the implication of that ? Will I be able to manipulate (start/stop/edit) vm on the important node while the second is offline ?
more importantly, Is there any future issue I will have, for example when the second node come up ? (remember, no HA, no shared filesystem ....)
Do I really face the eventuality of a split brain cluster with this kind of configuration ?


(I'm not a noob in proxmox and all, but really really not an expert, hence the question here)

 

[dietmar]

With that setup, you have quorum as long a node 1 is online. So yes, you can start/stop/edit while the second node is offline. There is no risk for split-brain if you keep the votes that way.

Btw, this is easy to test...

 

[Ztec]

> Btw, this is easy to test...

yes I know, but I won't test it until the next power outage (emoji sweating)
The question is more about the split-brain and unforeseen future issues. You responded (emoji thumb up) Thank

(edit: discovering this forum does not support UTF-8 (emojis) … )

 

[J-Rod]

For such a configuration where the hosts are disproportionate and/or you're not needing any of the cluster features, you should consider having each node be on its own and use Proxmox Datacenter Manager for centralized management and VM migrations between hosts. This also avoids cluster annoyances, such as not being able to join a node with VMs to a cluster, or having to wipe a host after removing it from a cluster.