Running Highly Available Virtualization at the Edge With Just Two Data Nodes
SUSE, Wednesday, June 24th, 2026
SUSE shows a two-node-plus-arbiter reference architecture delivering edge HA virtualization at lower cost.
SUSE published a reference architecture for enterprise-grade high availability at the edge using only two data nodes instead of the usual three.
The Two-Node with Arbiter (TNA) topology combines SUSE Virtualization, Portworx Enterprise by Everpure, and Supermicro Compact Edge Servers, with a lightweight arbiter node holding cluster metadata rather than data.
In testing, the system kept services available through node failures, with only about eight seconds of total I/O interruption during an extreme double-outage scenario. SUSE says the approach can cut per-site storage infrastructure costs by 25-35 percent for distributed enterprises.