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In WSFC FCI with 2 nodes and file share, each node participates in a heart beat.

The file share is a voting witness, and connectivity from any node to that share is counted as an affirmative vote. More than one-half of the possible votes must be affirmative for the cluster to be healthy.

So this mean - in a 2 node fci with 1 file share, each node sends its heart beat to the cluster and its connectivity to witness is counted as 1 vote. So each node effectively sends 2 votes to the cluster?

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In WSFC FCI with 2 nodes and file share, each node participates in a heart beat.

It would be correct to sat that each node participates in "Quorum" not heartbeat. Heartbeat is method of communication while Quorum is kind of "vote/understanding" that is reached in WSFC.

So this mean - in a 2 node fci with 1 file share, each node sends its heart beat to the cluster and its connectivity to witness is counted as 1 vote.

Assuming all nodes are voting in WSFC, in 2 node 1 FS configuration. Each node will present its votes and this will be counted as 1 vote( 1 vote from each node) and 1 vote will come from FS witness so total votes will be 3 votes. Each node can "only" give 1 vote not 2 votes.

Please read the links shared.

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  • In a 2 node 1 file share cluster, what is the point of the single vote of file share? For example - if node 2 goes down, yet we have 2 votes (node 1's and file share's vote) thereby keeping the cluster alive, but we don't have HA because if the node 1 crashes then there is nothing to fall back to.
    – variable
    Commented May 9, 2022 at 10:27
  • If the vote from FS is not there so there will be only 2 votes from each node. Now let us assume one node goes down so now you have 1 vote ONLY. For quorum to work you should have more than 50% which mean more than 1 vote to be there. with just 2 nodes voting and one node down the WSFC will loose quorum and will come down. "I strongly suggest you to read the links"
    – Shanky
    Commented May 9, 2022 at 10:34
  • I was hoping there should be some kind of alert in a situation where file share and node 2 go down rather than taking the cluster down when node 1 is working perfectly fine.
    – variable
    Commented May 9, 2022 at 10:44
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    No there is no inbuilt alert from cluster GUI, but starting from Windows server 2012 you have dynamic quorum and witness feature which removes vote from node when it goes down. Helping cluster to keep running with "last man standing".
    – Shanky
    Commented May 9, 2022 at 10:53
  • The dynamic vote of file share seems to be valid only based on the initial membership (If you have an even number of nodes plus witness, the witness votes, so the total is odd. - learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-stack/hci/concepts/…). So if there are 2 nodes and 1 file share, then the majority is 2. Irrespective of whether the node or fileshare goes down. I think the dynamic thing is at the time of config and not after a node goes down. Do you have any hands-on experience about this?
    – variable
    Commented May 9, 2022 at 11:03

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