Clustering improvements in Windows Server 2019
The clustering feature has been around for a while but is continually being improved. There have been some big changes and additions to failover clustering in the two latest LTSC releases, Server 2016 and Server 2019. Some of the changes that we will discuss were originally introduced in 2016, so they are not brand new, but are still relevant to the way that we handle clusters in Server 2019 so they are worth mentioning here.
True two-node clusters with USB witnesses
When configuring quorum for a failover cluster, prior to Server 2019, a two-node cluster required three servers, because the witness for quorum needed to reside on a witness share of some kind, usually a separate file server.
Starting in 2019, that witness can now be a simple USB drive, and it doesn't even have to be plugged into a Windows Server! There are many pieces of networking equipment (switches, routers, and so on) that can accept USB-based file storage...