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Cluster Lifecycle

The Cluster Lifecycle describes how Digital Rebar Provision manages groups of machines as a coordinated unit. Clusters have their own lifecycle and workflows that operate independently from the individual machines they contain.

Unlike the Machine Lifecycle (which provisions a single machine), the Cluster Lifecycle coordinates multi-machine deployments — provisioning, resizing, and destroying entire groups through cluster-level workflow chains.

How Clusters Differ from Machine Lifecycle

Aspect Machine Lifecycle Cluster Lifecycle
Subject One machine A group of machines
Workflows universal-discover, universal-start universal-cluster-provision, universal-cluster-destroy
Allocation Direct Via Resource Broker from a Pool
State tracking Machine object Cluster object + per-machine cluster/tags profile

Cluster Lifecycle Phases

  1. Provision — A Resource Broker allocates machines from a Pool; the cluster workflow drives each machine through its individual pipeline while tracking group state
  2. Operation — The cluster can be placed in WorkOrder Mode to manage ongoing operations (Kubernetes app deployments, cluster resizing, etc.)
  3. Destroy — The cluster workflow deprovisions machines and returns them to their Pool via the Resource Broker

In This Section

  • Cluster Architecture — How clusters work, the Cluster object, workflow chains, and relationship to Resource Brokers and Pools
  • Cluster Workflows — The provision/destroy pipeline structure and how it reuses machine lifecycle patterns

See Also