Unable to Force a WSFC Cluster to Start Without a Quorum I was testing a three node AlwaysOn availability group cluster.  SQL Server  is on Node 1 and I powered off Node 1 and Node 3 simultaneously.  The cluster lost its quorum and appear to be down.  I tried following "Force a WSFC Cluster to Start Without a Quorum", but I am unable to bring the cluster online.  It is stuck is "joining" state.





What can we do now?

cluster log

Initially the cluster service is down.  After executing the Start-ClusterNode command it goes into running state. I have tried restarting the cluster service and also restarting the node, but can't force quorum.
In the screenshot it shows the attempt to use -FixQuorum as part of the Start-ClusterNode cluster powershell commands, however the cluster log shows that quorum was not forced.



Your log shows the following:


Creating cluster node &lt;vector len='1'&gt;
&lt;item&gt;ClusSvc&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;/vector&gt;



Which is just starting up the cluster service. The log is also missing the fact stating that on this node quorum was forced.

Here is an example of how a cluster log (WSFC 2016, like the one you posted) would look if you forced quorum on the node:


Creating cluster node &lt;vector len='2'&gt;
&lt;item&gt;ClusSvc&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;item&gt;/FixQuorum&lt;/item&gt;
&lt;/vector&gt;  



Additionally, you'd see another entry further down:




[CS] FixQuorum mode is on



My suggestion is to log locally onto the server and try running the powershell command (after shutting down the cluster service if it's still running): 



Start-ClusterNode -Node SQL2 -ForceQuorum


Then check the status about 15 seconds later with:

Get-ClusterNode -Node SQL2


Check to see what is the status and also check the cluster log to see if the ForceQuorum switch was properly passed.