Hey there,

I currently have a 2 member DAG using a File Share Witness Quorum.  I have already experienced the file share go offline and cause problems to my cluster, resulting in a node failure...  This may or may not have been completely the fault of the fsw going offline, however it did get me thinking of the alternate quorum methods.

Would it be wise/problematic/other to have a 3 DAG member (in 1 site), but the 3rd member will NOT have any database copies, it will be used for node majority only?

If you can help  me understand why this would be a good or bad idea, please do.

ps. a short blunt sentence either way is not helpful.

Environment:
Hardware Load Balancer
Exchange 2010 SP3
2x CAS servers in CAS Array
2x MB servers in DAG
WS2008R2
HyperV VMs
iSCSI S

Hi

There is no technical reason why this wouldn't be a good idea, the only problem would be cost.  You need to pay for another Windows Server and Exchange 2010 license.

Steve

Excellent, that is the answer I was looking for.  Resource is no issue in this case.

Thank you.

Hi again Steve,

Relating to the above question, can you please clarify my thoughts/idea below.

My environment is only 1 site, so 2x CAS and 2x MB servers are in the same single site.  I want to add a 3rd Exchange server to the same site to be a voting member only, so that I can use node majority.

1.  Is this setup still going to be OK?

2.  Seeing as I do not need any roles on the Voting Exchange Server, what is the minimum role I would need to install for it to be an "Exchange Server" and qualify as a cluster node?

Or maybe a better way to think about this is, by having only a 2 member DAG, is the best quorum method to use Node and Disk Majority  or Node and File Share Majority taken from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc731739.aspx

Hi

I managed to miss your last post somehow.

1. Yes no problem with that setup

2. It just needs to have the mailbox role installed.  The server OS will need to be Enterprise edition to support clustering unless you use Windows 2012 in which case Standard edition will be fine.

Steve