Using the Cluster Menu

Learn the commands that you can use to control your cluster and a description of each.

On a Vocera Voice Server that is part of a cluster, the Vocera Control Panel has a Cluster menu that lets you control the cluster. For example, you may want to force a failover when you add a new machine to a cluster, or you may want to start one of the machines as a standalone Vocera Voice Server.

The Cluster menu provides the following commands:

Table 1. Cluster menu commands
Command Description
Start Standalone

Temporarily removes a Vocera Voice Server from a cluster and restarts it as a standalone system. This command does not break up a cluster or cause a failover to occur; instead, it allows you to disconnect a server from a cluster temporarily for maintenance.

The exact behavior of this command depends upon the state of the server at the time that you stopped it:

  • If the Vocera Voice Server was active and badges were connected to it, the badges reconnect when you start the node as a standalone system.

  • If the Vocera Voice Server was in standby mode, it restarts as an active standalone server, and it does not interfere with the active node of the cluster in any way.

The Start Standalone command is available only when the Vocera Voice Server is stopped. See Stopping and Restarting the Server for more information about stopping the server.

The Cluster Setup page on the System screen in the Administration Console does not get updated when you execute the Start Standalone command. That is, the Enable Cluster checkbox remains selected, all the servers remain in the list, and the status of the servers in the list does not change.

When you restart a standalone server, it goes into discovery mode and comes online as a cluster node in the same state—active or standby—it was in prior to becoming a standalone server.

You can restart a standalone server with either the Failover command in its Vocera Control Panel or the Force Restart button on the Cluster Setup page of its Administration Console.

Failover

Does one of the following, depending on the status of the Vocera Voice Server:

  • If the server was active, this command causes control of the cluster to fail over to one of the standby machines.

  • If the server was in standby mode, this command restarts the server, but does not cause control of the cluster to fail over.

  • If the server was running as a standalone server, this command restarts the server as a cluster node in the same state—active or standby—it was in prior to becoming a standalone server.

If failover occurs in a clustered environment, the control panel opens to the active server instance.