Autostart controls whether a Pacemaker node rejoins the cluster automatically after reboot, keeping failover behavior predictable during maintenance and planned outages.
On systemd-based systems managed with pcs, cluster autostart is implemented by enabling or disabling the corosync and pacemaker services on each node. The pcs cluster enable and pcs cluster disable commands apply those changes across nodes through the cluster management layer instead of running systemctl manually on every server.
Autostart affects boot-time behavior only, so changing it does not immediately start or stop the cluster on a running node. Disabling autostart on multiple nodes can reduce redundancy or break quorum after a power cycle, so keep enough nodes eligible to boot and rejoin when resources must remain highly available.
Steps to enable or disable Pacemaker cluster autostart:
- Enable autostart on all nodes.
$ sudo pcs cluster enable --all node-01: Cluster Enabled node-02: Cluster Enabled node-03: Cluster Enabled
--all applies the change to every node in the cluster configuration.
- Disable autostart on all nodes when needed.
$ sudo pcs cluster disable --all node-01: Cluster Disabled node-02: Cluster Disabled node-03: Cluster Disabled
Autostart changes do not stop currently running cluster services.
Disabling autostart prevents nodes from rejoining after reboot and can reduce quorum if multiple nodes remain offline.
- Verify service enablement on a node.
$ systemctl is-enabled pacemaker corosync disabled disabled
After pcs cluster disable, expect disabled for each unit.
Mohd Shakir Zakaria is a cloud architect with deep roots in software development and open-source advocacy. Certified in AWS, Red Hat, VMware, ITIL, and Linux, he specializes in designing and managing robust cloud and on-premises infrastructures.
