What does mean Votes in RVC

[Bab]

I used follow command for one of my vm in cluster and the number of votes are difference with others. The number of votes for other are 1 but for this vm with FTT=1 and stripe=2 is 2:

What does this means ?

 

[vsanDatastore (1)] 76986560-fe72-9fa8-abb9-005056aecea2/win1.vmdk
Couldn't find info about DOM object ''

[vsanDatastore (1)] 76986560-fe72-9fa8-abb9-005056aecea2/win1.vmdk
DOM Object: 79986560-823a-0154-7ee0-005056aecea2 (v10, owner: lhost3.opr.dsa, proxy owner: None, policy: cacheReservation = 0, stripeWidth = 1, CSN = 26, spbmProfileGenerationNumber = 0, SCSN = 21, hostFailuresToTolerate = 1, spbmProfileId = aa6d5a82-1c88-45da-85d3-3d74b91a5bad, proportionalCapacity = 0, forceProvisioning = 0, spbmProfileName = vSAN Default Storage Policy)
RAID_1
RAID_0
Component: 724b6960-52cb-64b7-2ce4-005056aecea2 (state: ACTIVE (5), host: lhost5.opr.dsa, capacity: 52a71903-6e2f-ce92-e1be-93980d519c2a, cache: 5292fd5e-4df1-e796-6b6b-2d64db0e5ac9,
votes: 2, usage: 5.2 GB, proxy component: false)
Component: 724b6960-50c7-6ab7-d405-005056aecea2 (state: ACTIVE (5), host: lhost5.opr.dsa, capacity: 52f26c44-3616-eab5-4730-c4aae367ef9a, cache: 5292fd5e-4df1-e796-6b6b-2d64db0e5ac9,
votes: 1, usage: 5.2 GB, proxy component: false)
RAID_0
Component: 724b6960-a6f5-6db7-5dae-005056aecea2 (state: ACTIVE (5), host: lhost6.opr.dsa, capacity: mpx.vmhba1:C0:T3:L0, cache: mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0,
votes: 2, usage: 5.2 GB, proxy component: false)
Component: 724b6960-115a-71b7-b78a-005056aecea2 (state: ACTIVE (5), host: lhost3.opr.dsa, capacity: mpx.vmhba1:C0:T2:L0, cache: mpx.vmhba1:C0:T1:L0,
votes: 2, usage: 5.2 GB, proxy component: false)

 

Is that related to witness ?

[Paudie O'Riordan]

Each component  can have a number of “votes”, which may be one or more. To achieve quorum in vSAN, “more than 50 percent of votes” or  “more than 50 percent of components” are needed.

For your pasted output the  VMDK win1.vmdk there is a total of 7 votes spread across 4 components

The first mirror (two components 724b6960-52cb-64b7-2ce4-005056aecea2  and 724b6960-50c7-6ab7-d405-005056aecea2) is on  lhost5 with a total of 3 votes.

The other mirror has 2 components but spread on hosts lhost6 and lhost3.

so if one host goes down, e.g. host5 you lose 3 votes, meaning you still have 4 votes , and thus greater than 50%.

the key takeaway, depending on the vSAN configuration version and policy, you may have  components to make up a VM or VMDK(  some which can be witnesse objects) and each component has a vote or weight associated with it to ensure it can decide quorum.

Cormac covers it here https://cormachogan.com/2015/03/13/vsan-6-0-part-1-new-quorum-mechanism/

This is a simple example , and it can become very complex so don't focus on this aspect.