A company is deploying a two-node active-passive cluster to host its payroll database on shared storage. The administrator notes that if the private heartbeat link fails, both servers could attempt to mount the database simultaneously, causing a split-brain condition. Which cluster component should be added to prevent this by providing a tie-breaking vote when communication between the nodes is lost?
Implement NIC teaming on each node's public interfaces
Configure a cluster quorum witness resource
Enable DNS round-robin for the virtual service name
Add multipath I/O (MPIO) paths to the shared storage
A quorum witness (disk, file-share or cloud witness, depending on the platform) gives an additional vote to one side of a partition so only the node (or subset of nodes) that holds the majority of votes can bring clustered resources online. This arbitration prevents both servers from taking ownership of the same data set at the same time, eliminating split-brain. DNS round-robin merely distributes client connections and offers no cluster arbitration. NIC teaming increases link redundancy for a single host but does not decide which node should own resources after a communication loss. Multipath I/O adds redundant storage paths but, again, does not arbitrate node ownership of the shared LUN.
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