[Info-vax] Quorum disk woes

[Marc Van Dyck]

As explained in the previous post, I have several clusters made of two
members and a quorum disk.

>From time to time - not always, but often enough to be worried - we 
have
issues when the entire cluster must be rebooted. This happens at least
for times a year to apply patches.

What sometimes happens is, when starting the first node, it gets stuck
at the "Waiting to form or join a VMS cluster" phase, as if the quorum
disk vote was not taken into account. I have to boot the second node
to unlock the situation. As soon as the second node joins, the quorum 
is
met and the boot sequences complete. Curiously, when both systems are
up, the DCL command SHOW CLUSTER displays the quorum disk as expected.

We've played a bit with that and understood that in this case, it is
enough to delete the file quorum.dat on the quorum disk. It will be
promptly re-created by VMS and the next boot will happen fine.

What I'd like to understand is

- What does the quorum.dat file contain ? DUMP does not display
anything.

- In which circumstances might this file become corrupt or incorrect ?

Thank you,
Marc.

-- 
Marc Van Dyck