[Info-vax] Quorum disk woes

[Bob Gezelter]

On Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 4:57:29 AM UTC-4, Marc Van Dyck wrote:
> 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

Marc,

Are you sure that the quorum disk is directly accessible by the primary system? What does the console display?

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com