Avoid locking in a 2 node cluster environment when 1 node is down.

[GuiltyNL]

We have a solution with 2 nodes in a cluster. We won't use HA, we only want to use the replication feature, just to copy VM's to each other to make our solution redundant in a way.

We used this also in our old Hyper-V environment, but in Hyper-V we didn't need to setup a cluster. I was just able to setup replication to each other, without a cluster / quorum setup. It seems that in Proxmox a cluster is mandatory to enable replication.

In my current setup a node goes in read only mode when it doesn't have quorum because the other node is offline.

Because we only use the replication functionality I want to avoid this protection mechanism. Because a node in read only mode can't be backupped either.

I'm able to solve that with 'pvecm expected 1', but can I change the config to make this behaviour permanent?

Thanks!

 

[wolfgang]

Hi,

If you do not like to have a cluster you can use pve-zsync.
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PVE-zsync

 

[GuiltyNL]

So if I want the convenience of the GUI, I need to setup the cluster and in case of (temporary) down time of one node use 'pvecm expected 1' to be sure backupping still works.

Or I need to forget the cluster and work with the pve-zsync commandline.

Correct?

 

[wolfgang]

Generally correct.
But one question, if you have 2 nodes and one is down where do you put syncs (backups)?

 

[GuiltyNL]

The vzdumps are stored on a Synology NAS.

 

[mailinglists]

You can always add third node to keep the quorum.
It can be something really cheap like:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_as_third_node

You're welcome.

 

[GuiltyNL]

That is actually quite a nice idea. Thx @mailinglists