yep, if i go in to configure vSAN, selecting 2-node, i select my disks, then i go to select a witness host and nothing shows as available:
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Dec 19, 2023 2:17 pm
Dec 19, 2023 2:22 pm
@malcolm-r It has been a while since I deployed 2-node. I bet they have added checks for the witness to not be in the same cluster as it is servicing, which is a good thing, but for home lab, makes it a bit more challenging. To you have another host you could place the appliance on by chance?
Dec 19, 2023 2:46 pm
@brandon-lee not right now. but doesn't having a 3rd host defeat the feature of a 2-node vSAN cluster?
Dec 19, 2023 2:51 pm
@malcolm-r It does make it a little less appealing for home lab since they have added that as a requirement. However, for many enterprise customers, it is a good fit since they may have edge environments that the 2-node is all that is needed and they have a central DC where they can place the witness node. It does still make sense for home lab though if you had another standalone host and you wanted a way to have vMotions and such as a possibility for maintenance with a shared datastore and you didn't have external storage.
I have been waiting to see if VMware would come out with a way to host this in AWS or somewhere as an offsite witness appliance. However, have not seen any news on that front in quite a while.
Dec 19, 2023 3:03 pm
@brandon-lee i guess i could nest an esxi host under my main host and connect that to vcenter and put the appliance there. i'm not sure if the networking will get funky if i try that.
Dec 19, 2023 3:09 pm
@malcolm-r also nested networking can be a mind bender sometimes, but you could just create your nested ESXi host on the same port group as your vSAN traffic and the witness appliance should pick up the same untagged traffic.
Dec 19, 2023 3:05 pm
yeah you could definitely try doing that...that is good thinking outside the box 
Dec 19, 2023 4:56 pm
progress:
since the vSAN witness appliance is already an esxi image, i added it to my existing vcenter and created a new cluster.
so in this case, the "vSAN-Witness" VM in the "Main" cluster is the same machine as the "192.168.1.30" esxi host under the "Witness" cluster.
after doing that, "192.168.1.30" shows up as an eligible Witness in the vSAN config, but when I try to complete it, it's saying my hosts are mixed versions. which is true. i haven't upgraded my other host from 6.7 to 8.0 yet. i should've realized ahead of time. now i have to wait until i can have some downtime since that host includes my NAS 🤣
Dec 19, 2023 7:52 pm
@malcolm-r dude that is great thinking outside the box on the nested, nested config Hey let me know if you need to get your hands on the 6.7 appliance. You can change your witness appliance through the wizard in your vSAN configuration. I have done that a few times before and works well. it just syncs up metadata with the new witness appliance.
Dec 29, 2023 11:14 pm
i think i may try and test direct-connect between the hosts rather than going through a switch. *in theory* it shouldn't matter. my 10gig switch has plenty of throughput.
Dec 29, 2023 11:18 pm
@malcolm-r that's great. I had direct connect on a list of things to try but never got around to it. So, I am interested to see how well you find it works. With two hosts, it should work great. I know this makes for an interesting configuration that in theory could eliminate a 10 gig switch for ones that wanted to try 2-node vSAN.
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