Hi all,
Let's say a VM with PFTT=1 that is currently registered to an ESXi at the P-Site in a VSAN Stretched Cluster. (SFTT can be anything, doesn't matter here).
I understand that you will need at least the P-Site and the Witness-Site to be up before the VM can boot. In other words, you don't need to up the S-Site to boot this VM.
This has been tested and shown to be true.
I was also under the impression that with a VM with PFTT=0 and the Affinity* locked to the P-Site, you don't need neither the Witness-Site nor the S-Site to be up to boot this VM.
*Remember if you set PFTT=0 you will be forced to pick the site affinity.
However, when I tested this, this is shown to not to work. Error shown in the below screenshot/attachment when trying to boot such a VM.
Basically, I booted a P-Site ESXi, but left the Witness-Site and S-Site both powered off.
Then, I login to the ESXi's Embedded Host Client, picked a VM that has a PFTT=0 and SFTT=0 Storage Policy that is registered to the ESXi, then tried to boot it, but it failed.
This is strange, shouldn't this VM NOT have any witness components whatsoever? Why does it need the Witness-Site to come up just to boot? Any ideas?
Entire VSAN Stretched Cluster environment is 6.7U1.
Thanks!