How to start and stop a Pacemaker cluster with PCS

Starting and stopping a Pacemaker cluster controls when high-availability resources are actively managed and when failover decisions are made. It is commonly used for planned maintenance windows, staged upgrades, or controlled downtime.

The pcs tool coordinates cluster actions through the pcsd daemon, allowing a single command to start or stop cluster services on multiple nodes. These operations manage the underlying corosync and pacemaker services, which determines whether nodes participate in quorum and resource scheduling.

Stopping cluster services can interrupt traffic, unmount clustered filesystems, and shut down cluster-managed daemons; verify service impact and storage dependencies before stopping the full cluster. Cluster start/stop affects the current boot only, while pcs cluster enable and pcs cluster disable control whether services start automatically after reboots. Running pcs cluster commands requires an authenticated node; mismatched authentication can prevent remote node control.

1. Check the current cluster status.

   $ sudo pcs status
   Cluster name: clustername
   
   WARNINGS:
   No stonith devices and stonith-enabled is not false
   
   Cluster Summary:
     * Stack: corosync (Pacemaker is running)
     * Current DC: node-02 (version 2.1.6-6fdc9deea29) - partition with quorum
     * Last updated: Wed Dec 31 08:18:05 2025 on node-01
     * Last change:  Wed Dec 31 08:14:16 2025 by hacluster via crmd on node-02
     * 3 nodes configured
     * 0 resource instances configured
   
   Node List:
     * Online: [ node-01 node-02 node-03 ]
   
   Full List of Resources:
     * No resources
   
   Daemon Status:
     corosync: active/enabled
     pacemaker: active/enabled
     pcsd: active/enabled

2. Start the cluster on all nodes.

   $ sudo pcs cluster start --all
   node-03: Starting Cluster...
   node-01: Starting Cluster...
   node-02: Starting Cluster...

   Omitting --all starts cluster services on the local node only.

   Related: How to manage Pacemaker cluster services with systemctl in Linux

3. Verify the cluster is running.

   $ sudo pcs status
   Cluster name: clustername
   
   WARNINGS:
   No stonith devices and stonith-enabled is not false
   
   Cluster Summary:
     * Stack: corosync (Pacemaker is running)
     * Current DC: node-02 (version 2.1.6-6fdc9deea29) - partition with quorum
     * Last updated: Wed Dec 31 08:18:06 2025 on node-01
     * Last change:  Wed Dec 31 08:14:16 2025 by hacluster via crmd on node-02
     * 3 nodes configured
     * 0 resource instances configured
   
   Node List:
     * Online: [ node-01 node-02 node-03 ]
   
   Full List of Resources:
     * No resources
   
   Daemon Status:
     corosync: active/enabled
     pacemaker: active/enabled
     pcsd: active/enabled

   Cluster services can take a few seconds to elect a DC and report resource state after a start.

4. Stop the cluster on all nodes.

   $ sudo pcs cluster stop --all
   node-03: Stopping Cluster (pacemaker)...
   node-02: Stopping Cluster (pacemaker)...
   node-01: Stopping Cluster (pacemaker)...
   node-02: Stopping Cluster (corosync)...
   node-03: Stopping Cluster (corosync)...
   node-01: Stopping Cluster (corosync)...

   Stopping the cluster stops pacemaker management and can take services offline.

   Related: How to manage Pacemaker cluster services with systemctl in Linux

5. Confirm the cluster is stopped on the local node.

   $ sudo pcs cluster status
   Error: cluster is not currently running on this node

   The error indicates corosync and pacemaker are not running on the node.