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.
Steps to start and stop a Pacemaker cluster with PCS:
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
