Operate

Cluster operations

Use these guides for the day 2 lifecycle of an OpenBao cluster, including production readiness, backups, upgrades, maintenance, troubleshooting, and decommissioning.

Open the production checklistOpen recovery and restore

Use this section to

• close the gap between a working cluster and a supportable service
• put backups and upgrade planning in place before risky change
• use maintenance and pause controls with the intended operating model
• move into recovery and restore when troubleshooting is no longer enough

Reliability and change

1. 01

   Production checklist

   Use the checklist to confirm an environment is production-ready and supportable.

   Open
2. 02

   Configure backups

   Set up snapshot streaming, backup identity, and restore readiness as part of the operating baseline.

   Open
3. 03

   Plan upgrades

   Use RollingUpdate or BlueGreen with a clear understanding of prerequisites, cutover, and retry behavior.

   Open

Cluster controls

1. 01

   Run planned maintenance

   Use maintenance workflows for controlled disruption, scaling, and planned cluster interventions.

   Open
2. 02

   Pause reconciliation

   Temporarily stop operator-driven changes when you need manual intervention or a controlled investigation window.

   Open
3. 03

   Decommission a cluster

   Remove a cluster with the deletion policy that matches data, PVCs, and external backups.

   Open

Troubleshooting and recovery

1. 01

   Troubleshoot the cluster

   Use conditions, events, and common failure patterns to understand the problem before it becomes a wider incident.

   Open
2. 02

   Recovery and restore

   Use safe mode, no-leader, sealed-cluster, and restore workflows when normal operations are no longer enough.

   Open

Supporting context

Recovery & RestoreUse the incident runbooks when symptoms turn into an active recovery event.Operation lifecycle architectureRead the architecture deep dive when you need to understand locks, manager ownership, or serialized operations.