Windows – 2 node cluster (active-passive) with Windows Server 2016

This is a slightly older question but the problem presented here is based on a misconception on how and when failover in clusters, especially two-node clusters, works.

The gist is: You can not do failover testing by disabling communication between the two nodes. Doing so will result in exactly what you are seeing, a split-brain scenario with additional, mutual STONITH. If you want to test the fencing capabilities, a simple killall -9 corosync on the active node will do. Other ways are crm node fence or stonith_admin -F.

From the not quite complete description of your cluster (where is the output of crm configure show and cat /etc/corosync/corosync.conf?) it seems you are using the 10.10.10.xx addresses for messaging, i.e. Corosync/cluster communication. The 172.10.10.xx addresses are your regular/service network addresses and you would access a given node, for example using SSH, by its 172.10.10.xx address. DNS also seems to resolve a node hostname like node1 to 172.10.10.1.

You have STONITH configured to use SSH, which is not a very good idea in itself, but you are probably just testing. I haven't used it myself but I assume the SSH STONITH agent logs into the other node and issues a shutdown command, like ssh root@node2 "shutdown -h now" or something equivalent.

Now, what happens when you cut cluster communication between the nodes? The nodes no longer see each node as alive and well, because there is no more communication between them. Thus each node assumes it is the only survivor of some unfortunate event and tries to become (or remain) the active or primary node. This is the classic and dreaded split-brain scenario.

Part of this is to make sure the other, obviously and presumably failed node is down for good, which is where STONITH comes in. Keep in mind that both nodes are now playing the same game: trying to become (or stay) active and take over all cluster resources, as well as shooting the other node in the head.

You can probably guess what happens now. node1 does ssh root@node2 "shutdown -h now" and node2 does ssh root@node1 "shutdown -h now". This doesn't use the cluster communication network 10.10.10.xx but the service network 172.10.10.xx. Since both nodes are in fact alive and well, they have no problem issuing commands or receiving SSH connections, so both nodes shoot each other at the same time. This kills both nodes.

If you don't use STONITH then a split-brain could have even worse consequences, especially in case of DRBD, where you could end up with both nodes becoming Primary. Data corruption is likely to happen and the split-brain must be resolved manually.

I recommend reading the material on http://www.hastexo.com/resources/hints-and-kinks which is written and maintained by the guys who contributed (and still contribute) a large chunk of what we today call "the Linux HA stack".

TL;DR: If you are cutting cluster communication between your nodes in order to test your fencing setup, you are doing it wrong. Use killall -9 corosync, crm node fence or stonith_admin -F instead. Cutting cluster communication will only result in a split-brain scenario, which can and will lead to data corruption.

In the sources of pcs-0.9.115-32.el7 the getClusterName function is implemented:

def getClusterName():
    if is_rhel6():
        try:
            dom = parse(settings.cluster_conf_file)
        except (IOError,xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError):
            return ""

        return dom.documentElement.getAttribute("name")
    else:
        try:
            f = open(settings.corosync_conf_file,'r')
        except IOError as e:
            return ""

        p = re.compile('cluster_name: *(.*)')
        for line in f:
            m = p.match(line)
            if m:
                return m.group(1)

    return ""

This function check for rhel6 to extract the cluster name from /etc/cluster/cluster.conf (attribute name) or in other case from /etc/corosync/corosync.conf.

The regular expression expected at least one space between cluster_name and name ('cluster_name: *(.*)') in corosync.conf file, maybe this is the problem.

def is_rhel6():
    try:
        issue = open('/etc/system-release').read()
    except IOError as e:
        return False

    if re.search(r'(Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server|CentOS|Scientific Linux) release 6\.', issue):
        return True
    else:
        return False

Check if exist file /etc/corosync/corosync.conf with the proper permissions. I think this bug can be relevant for you: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1094812 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1029129

I hope this help.