1. Unless you have some requirement of shutting down the 3rd site also then leave that running, otherwise the Witness remains untouched and not shutdown during using vSAN Cluster Shutdown Wizard.
This is documented at the below resource: "When you shut down a vSAN stretched cluster, the witness host remains active."
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsan/vsan/8-0/vsan-administration/expanding-and-managing-a-vsan-cluster/shutting-down-and-restarting-the-vsan-cluster.html
2. If Witness site does need to be shutdown also then can just power off the Witness VM and host it is running on after completing cluster shutdown (and power-on before exiting shutdown).
No, do not unstretch the cluster.
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsan/vsan/8-0/vsan-administration/expanding-and-managing-a-vsan-cluster/shutting-down-and-restarting-the-vsan-cluster/shut-down-the-vsan-cluster.html
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Original Message:
Sent: Dec 23, 2025 05:11 AM
From: ian g
Subject: vSAN Stretched Cluster with Witness host - shut down steps
- vSAN Stretched Cluster - 2 fault domains with 2 ESXi hosts per each so 4 hosts in total on a Cluster
- Witness host VM running on a single ESXi host in 3rd location with a few more VMs
1. How such infrastructure on Stretched Cluster should be properly shutdown if i'd like to start with shutting down the single ESXi host with Witness and other VMs at first and then the Cluster?
I would like to be sure that shutting down the single host with Witness won't impact the vSAN data at all.
2. I know that I should use "Shutdown Cluster" option to shut down the Cluster but not sure if I can just shutdown Witness host at first along with other VMs and single ESXi host without disabling anything on a vSAN?
Maybe I should combine it with "Disable Stretched Cluster" within "Fault Domains" section?
any help, suggestions, documentation will be appreciated
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