Windows 2025 cluster issues - quorum shows lost, even when using file share witness
Mike Leone
Cluster Event log:
Run the Validate a Configuration wizard to check your network configuration. If the condition persists, check for hardware or software errors related to the network adapter. Also check for failures in any other network components to which the node is connected such as hubs, switches, or bridges.
But Quorum was NOT lost. The other node was always online, and pointing at the File Share Witness. Everything just went offline, and stayed offline, until the other node came back.
Mike. Leone, <mailto:tur...@mike-leone.com>
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Philip Elder
Set up a 100GB shared LUN.
Connect that LUN to the nodes via iSCSI Target connection.
Set it to OFFLINE on one.
Format it NTFS on the other.
Call it Quorum.
Run the Witness Wizard and set that LUN as your quorum location.
Get rid of the network share. Something is not set up right there.
Philip Elder MCTS
Senior Technical Architect
Microsoft High Availability MVP
MPECS Inc.
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Mike Leone
Set up a 100GB shared LUN.
Connect that LUN to the nodes via iSCSI Target connection.
Set it to OFFLINE on one.
Format it NTFS on the other.
Call it Quorum.
Run the Witness Wizard and set that LUN as your quorum location.
Get rid of the network share. Something is not set up right there.
Mike Leone
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ntsysadmin/3656a5c5e25549a99485d3cc2782d477%40MPECSInc.Ca.
Philip Elder
Source 1: Bad VLAN port setting, tag path, or MTU setting
Source 2: Titanix (Nutanix) is the source of the problem
Can you put a file share witness on a system that is separate from Nutanix?
Philip Elder MCTS
Senior Technical Architect
Microsoft High Availability MVP
MPECS Inc.
E-mail: Phili...@mpecsinc.ca
Phone: +1 (780) 458-2028
Web: www.mpecsinc.com
Blog: blog.mpecsinc.com
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Philip Elder
The other cluster(s) being off the Nutanix setup?
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ntsysadmin/CAHBr%2B%2BgNApF1nYD_xEzGwR_ihJzCSCAYa%2BGoQGJi8crt36wCDw%40mail.gmail.com.
Mike Leone
Source 1: Bad VLAN port setting, tag path, or MTU setting
Source 2: Titanix (Nutanix) is the source of the problem
Can you put a file share witness on a system that is separate from Nutanix?
Mike Leone
The other cluster(s) being off the Nutanix setup?
Philip Elder
Ah.
Nutanix AHV is the problem then.
If things work as expected using VMware as your hypervisor _on_ the Nutanix HCI but when you start using AHV the problems arise then there’s the key right there.
You could stand up a virtual S2D (Storage Space Direct) 2-node cluster on Nutanix HCI and see if the problems follow. I suspect not though as VMware and Hyper-V are very similar in their performance, stability, and network integration.
AHV? I’m not so sure. But, the pointers are there to AHV.
Philip Elder MCTS
Senior Technical Architect
Microsoft High Availability MVP
MPECS Inc.
E-mail: Phili...@mpecsinc.ca
Phone: +1 (780) 458-2028
Web: www.mpecsinc.com
Blog: blog.mpecsinc.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/MPECSInc
Teams: Phili...@MPECSInc.Cloud
Please note: Although we may sometimes respond to email, text and phone calls instantly at all hours of the day, our regular business hours are 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM, Monday thru Friday.
From: ntsys...@googlegroups.com <ntsys...@googlegroups.com>
On Behalf Of Mike Leone
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2025 12:30
To: ntsys...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [ntsysadmin] Windows 2025 cluster issues - quorum shows lost, even when using file share witness
On Tue, Aug 19, 2025 at 1:42 PM Philip Elder <Phili...@mpecsinc.ca> wrote:
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Mike Leone
Ah.
Nutanix AHV is the problem then.
I uninstalled my cluster, and deleted the 2 Win 2025 VMs. I rebuilt it using Win 2022. it accessed the same Volume Group, using the same iSCSI and same IPs. This time I used a disk quorum, which is how we usually build our clusters.
And it works perfectly.
If I have the disk quorum, and the role (SQL Server) and all the disks associated with the role, on node DBS029, and I reboot DBS029, everything smoothly moves over to DBS030, as it should, and never goes offline.
If I have the disk quorum, and the role (SQL Server) and all the disks associated with the role, on node DBS030, and I reboot DBS030, everything smoothly moves over to DBS029, as it should, and never goes offline.
I repeated this test 4 times, rebooting each node which held all roles, quorum, and disks. In all cases, everything transitioned smoothly to the other node, exactly as it should.
So at this point, all I can assume is that Win 2025 clustering does NOT work on the version of AHV that I am running, since a similar configuration using Win 2022 on that version of AHV does work as expected.
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Philip Elder
Nutanix keeps their cards very close to their chest, one of the main reasons we will never partner with them, so trying to search out forum posts relative to issues on their platform is virtually unobtainium.
So, that does not exonerate AHV since we’re building clusters on Windows Server 2025, as are my fellow MVPs, and other than the zero CPU usage in Task Manager bug I’ve not seen much for anything else since GA.
I’d get the Nutanix support folks to set up an identical platform and cluster setup to see if they hit it. They should be performing root cause analysis on the problem since it’s on their platform. They’ve got front line to Microsoft too.
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