I'm wondering if someone could please give me some advice regarding the Quorum configuration for my High Availability group. We have 3 sites across the UK, with users for a particular system at each site. This system has a SQL Database at it's core. Our primary site has two separate buildings, 100m apart, but with fibre channel connections between. I have a SQL Server in each of these buildings, and one at one of the remote sites. All servers are running Windows 2012R2 & SQL 2014. I've created an availability group with synchronous commit between the two buildings at the primary site, and asynchronous commit to the remote. Network connectivity between sites rarely goes down as it causes the business significant problems. Currently all nodes have a quorum vote, for a total of 3 votes - an odd number as per best practice. However, Kendra Little from Brent Ozar Ltd., says we should always have a file share witness, and details a similar situation to mine, but with unreliable network connectivity offsite.
I could add a file share witness, and remove the vote from the remote site node, but that file share would be in one of the buildings in the primary site. If we lose that building (or it's network), automatic failover wouldn't work.
I could add 2 file share witnesses (one in each building), and leave the remote site node with a vote, to give 5 votes. Or even add file share witnesses at remote sites (but this seems a bad idea).
Any suggestions would be appreciated, but I'm currently leaning towards leaving things as is. The system's application servers will reside in one building at the primary site, but I'm planning on using Veeam to give them resilience.
Many thanks,
Pete Cousins