Failover Cluster 2025 goes offline if a node is shutted down

Question

hello,

i have a Virtual Failover Cluster with windows 2025 and file share witness. All seem ok, Resource can switch normally to other node.

If i Switch the Cluster Owner on the node 1 and Shutdown the node 2, there's no outage.

If i leave the Cluster owner on the node 2 anda shutdown, all goes offline.

The problem is identical if i invert the procedure.

File share witness is available to both the nodes

Cluster log don't give us informations to resolve.

Answer 1

What you're describing suggests a quorum misconfiguration or a node vote issue.

1. Uneven or disabled node votes

• If only one node has a vote and the FSW is a vote, the cluster needs 2/2 votes to stay online.
• If the voting node is shut down, the remaining node + FSW = 1/2 votes → no quorum, cluster goes down.
• This would explain why the node not hosting the Cluster Group can’t keep it online alone.

Check with PowerShell:

Get-ClusterNode | ft Name, NodeWeight

All nodes should show NodeWeight = 1.

2. FSW is misconfigured or not really contributing to quorum

Even if both nodes can reach the File Share Witness, it might not be actively contributing to quorum.

Check quorum configuration:

Get-ClusterQuorum

You should see something like:

ClusterQuorumType         : NodeAndFileShareMajority
QuorumResource            : FileShareWitness (\\YourWitnessPath)

If it says NodeMajority, or the file share witness is marked "not in use" or "not online", that's your issue.

3. Cluster group is not automatically moving on node shutdown

Though the Cluster Service normally fails over roles before shutdown, if the node shuts down too fast, the cluster might not have time to transition ownership — especially if quorum is not maintained.

Confirm role failover settings:

Get-ClusterGroup | fl Name, AutoFailbackType, PreferredOwners

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hth

Marcin

Answer 2

Hello, thanks for reply.

I attached below screenshots from command you suggested.

I think all value are normal.

Due to the Virtual hyper-v Host, they shutdown very quickly.

Answer 3

i have the same problem

it doesnt matter if u user file share witness or witness disk.

when tourn off the machine which is the owner, then the cluster shutsdown

anyone else face this problem?