A third vote consensus technique enables a first node, i.e., a surviving node, of a two-node cluster to establish a quorum and continue to operate in response to failure of a second node of the cluster. Each node maintains configuration information organized as a cluster database (CDB) which may be changed according to a consensus-based protocol. Changes to the CDB are logged on a third copy file system (TCFS) stored on a local copy of TCFS (L-TCFS). A shared copy of the TCFS (i.e., S-TCFS) may be stored on shared storage devices of one or more storage arrays coupled to the nodes. The local copy of the TCFS (i.e., L-TCFS) represents a quorum vote for each node of the cluster, while the S-TCFS represents an additional “tie-breaker” vote of a consensus-based protocol. The additional vote may be obtained from the shared storage devices by the surviving node as a third vote to establish the quorum and enable the surviving node to cast two of three votes (i.e., a majority of votes) needed to continue operation of the cluster. That is, the majority of votes allows the surviving node to update the CDB with the configuration information changes so as to continue proper operation of the cluster.