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---
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layout: docs
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page_title: Bootstrap a Datacenter
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description: >-
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Bootstrapping a datacenter is the initial deployment process in Consul that starts server agents and joins them together. Learn how to automatically or manually join servers in a cluster.
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---
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# Bootstrap a Datacenter
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An agent can run in either client or server mode. Server nodes are responsible for running the
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[consensus protocol](/docs/architecture/consensus) and storing the cluster state.
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The client nodes are mostly stateless and rely heavily on the server nodes.
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Before a Consul cluster can begin to service requests,
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a server node must be elected leader. Bootstrapping is the process
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of joining these initial server nodes into a cluster. Read the
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[architecture documentation](/docs/architecture) to learn more about
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the internals of Consul.
It is recommended to have three or five total servers per datacenter. A single server deployment is _highly_ discouraged
as data loss is inevitable in a failure scenario. Please refer to the
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[deployment table](/docs/architecture/consensus#deployment-table) for more detail.
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~> **Note**: In versions of Consul prior to 0.4, bootstrapping was a manual process. For details on using the `-bootstrap` flag directly, see the
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[manual bootstrapping documentation](/docs/install/bootstrapping#manually-join-the-servers).
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Manual bootstrapping with `-bootstrap` is not recommended in
newer versions of Consul (0.5 and newer) as it is more error-prone.
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Instead you should use automatic bootstrapping
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with [`-bootstrap-expect`](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_bootstrap_expect).
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## Bootstrapping the Servers
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The recommended way to bootstrap the servers is to use the [`-bootstrap-expect`](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_bootstrap_expect)
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configuration option. This option informs Consul of the expected number of
server nodes and automatically bootstraps when that many servers are available. To prevent
inconsistencies and split-brain (clusters where multiple servers consider
themselves leader) situations, you should either specify the same value for
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[`-bootstrap-expect`](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_bootstrap_expect)
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or specify no value at all on all the servers. Only servers that specify a value will attempt to bootstrap the cluster.
Suppose we are starting a three server cluster. We can start `Node A`, `Node B`, and `Node C` with each
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providing the `-bootstrap-expect 3` flag. Once the nodes are started, you should see a warning message in the service output.
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```log
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[WARN] raft: EnableSingleNode disabled, and no known peers. Aborting election.
```
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The warning indicates that the nodes are expecting 2 peers but none are known yet. Below you will learn how to connect the servers so that one can be
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elected leader.
## Creating the Cluster
You can trigger leader election by joining the servers together, to create a cluster. You can either configure the nodes to join automatically or manually.
### Automatically Join the Servers
There are multiple options for joining the servers. Choose the method which best suits your environment and specific use case.
- Specify a list of servers with
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[-join](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_join) and
[start_join](/docs/agent/config/config-files#start_join)
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options.
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- Specify a list of servers with [-retry-join](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_retry_join) option.
- Use automatic joining by tag for supported cloud environments with the [-retry-join](/docs/agent/config/cli-flags#_retry_join) option.
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All three methods can be set in the agent configuration file or
the command line flag.
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### Manually Join the Servers
To manually create a cluster, you should connect to one of the servers
and run the `consul join` command.
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```shell-session
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$ consul join <Node A Address> <Node B Address> <Node C Address>
Successfully joined cluster by contacting 3 nodes.
```
Since a join operation is symmetric, it does not matter which node initiates it. Once the join is successful, one of the nodes will output something like:
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```log
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[INFO] consul: adding server foo (Addr: 127.0.0.2:8300) (DC: dc1)
[INFO] consul: adding server bar (Addr: 127.0.0.1:8300) (DC: dc1)
[INFO] consul: Attempting bootstrap with nodes: [127.0.0.3:8300 127.0.0.2:8300 127.0.0.1:8300]
...
[INFO] consul: cluster leadership acquired
```
### Verifying the Cluster and Connect the Clients
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As a sanity check, the [`consul info`](/commands/info) command
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is a useful tool. It can be used to verify the `raft.num_peers`
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and to view the latest log index under `raft.last_log_index`. When
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running [`consul info`](/commands/info) on the followers, you
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should see `raft.last_log_index` converge to the same value once the
leader begins replication. That value represents the last log entry that
has been stored on disk.
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Now that the servers are all started and replicating to each other, you can
join the clients with the same join method you used for the servers.
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Clients are much easier as they can join against any existing node. All nodes participate in a gossip
protocol to perform basic discovery, so once joined to any member of the
cluster, new clients will automatically find the servers and register
themselves.
-> **Note:** It is not strictly necessary to start the server nodes before the clients; however, most operations will fail until the servers are available.
