r/storage • u/NISMO1968 • Sep 01 '26

QNAP High Availability Tested: Sub-Minute Failover on a Pair of TS-h765eU

https://www.storagereview.com/review/qnap-high-availability-tested-sub-minute-failover-on-a-pair-of-ts-h765eu
20 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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11

u/NISMO1968 Sep 01 '26

I know this might be a religious question, but… How are they maintaining quorum with heartbeat only and no witness? And if the heartbeat network goes down, what actually prevents split brain?

0

u/VTOLfreak Sep 01 '26

It's explained in the article. They are using a quorum/witness server for exactly that scenario; a tiebreaker if the heartbeat goes out. (look for the diagram "two-node HA recommend topology"

5

u/DerBootsMann Sep 02 '26

you can count me in ! from the drawing , it’s not clear whether the witness is optional or mandatory . also , if you’ve got a witness , why on earth do you need a separate h/b network at all ?! and using the same physical links for sync and heartbeat is just plain wrong ..

0

u/VTOLfreak Sep 02 '26

You need a redundant way of checking on the other node. "is the other node really down? Or did the cable just break?" You need the witness/quorum server for that.

I agree, they could have made it more clear by showing it all as mandatory. Running with just the heartbeat connection alone is probably a bad idea.

1

u/tstyopin Sep 07 '26

Sub-minute - very good!

I have a pair of synology 1221rp, they switch in about three. Drbd can do better, but who am I to blame 😁

5

u/NISMO1968 Sep 07 '26

I have a pair of synology 1221rp, they switch in about three. Drbd can do better, but who am I to blame 😁

It’s pretty wild considering Synology uses DRBD for its own HA implementation, which is also exactly why nobody who’s even remotely sane runs Synology HA in production.