HA Deployment is enabled by default since Ussuri release[1] with [2]. So pacemaker will be deployed by default whether you set up 1 or more controller nodes since Ussuri. Without pacemaker deployment is possible but would need more changes(apart from removing pacemaker from roles_data.yaml file), like adjusting resource_registry to use non pacemaker resources. HA with 1 Controller works fine as we have green jobs[3][4] running with both 1 controller/3 controllers, so would recommend to look why pcsd is failing for you and proceed with HA. But if you still want to go without pacemaker then can try adjusting resource-registry to enable/disable pacemaker resources