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---
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layout: "intro"
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page_title: "Join a Cluster"
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sidebar_current: "gettingstarted-join"
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---
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# Join a Cluster
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In the previous page, we started our first agent. While it showed how easy
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it is to run Consul, it wasn't very exciting since we simply made a cluster of
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one member. In this page, we'll create a real cluster with multiple members.
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When starting a Consul agent, it begins without knowledge of any other node, and is
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an isolated cluster of one. To learn about other cluster members, the agent must
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_join_ an existing cluster. To join an existing cluster, only needs to know
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about a _single_ existing member. After it joins, the agent will gossip with this
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member and quickly discover the other members in the cluster.
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## Starting the Agents
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To simulate a more realistic cluster, we are using a two node cluster in
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Vagrant. The Vagrantfile can be found in the demo section of the repo
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[here](https://github.com/hashicorp/consul/tree/master/demo/vagrant-cluster).
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We start the first agent on our first node and also specify a node name.
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The node name must be unique and is how a machine is uniquely identified.
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By default it is the hostname of the machine, but we'll manually override it.
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We are also providing a bind address. This is the address that Consul listens on,
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and it *must* be accessible by all other nodes in the cluster. The first node
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will act as our server in this cluster.
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```
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$ consul agent -node=agent-one -bind=172.20.20.10
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...
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```
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Then, in another terminal, start the second agent on the new node.
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This time, we set the bind address to match the IP of the second node
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as specified in the Vagrantfile. In production, you will generally want
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to provide a bind address or interface as well.
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```
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$ consul agent -node=agent-two -bind=172.20.20.11
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...
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```
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At this point, you have two Consul agents running, one server and one client.
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The two Consul agents still don't know anything about each other, and are each part of their own
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clusters (of one member). You can verify this by running `consul members`
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against each agent and noting that only one member is a part of each.
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## Joining a Cluster
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Now, let's tell the first agent to join the second agent by running
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the following command in a new terminal:
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```
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$ consul join 127.0.0.1:7947
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Successfully joined cluster by contacting 1 nodes.
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```
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You should see some log output in each of the agent logs. If you read
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carefully, you'll see that they received join information. If you
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run `consul members` against each agent, you'll see that both agents now
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know about each other:
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```
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$ consul members
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agent-one 127.0.0.1:7946 alive
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agent-two 127.0.0.1:7947 alive
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$ consul members -rpc-addr=127.0.0.1:7374
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agent-two 127.0.0.1:7947 alive
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agent-one 127.0.0.1:4946 alive
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```
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<div class="alert alert-block alert-info">
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<p><strong>Remember:</strong> To join a cluster, a Consul agent needs to only
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learn about <em>one existing member</em>. After joining the cluster, the
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agents gossip with each other to propagate full membership information.
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</p>
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</div>
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In addition to using `consul join` you can use the `-join` flag on
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`consul agent` to join a cluster as part of starting up the agent.
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## Leaving a Cluster
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To leave the cluster, you can either gracefully quit an agent (using
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`Ctrl-C`) or force kill one of the agents. Gracefully leaving allows
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the node to transition into the _left_ state, otherwise other nodes
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will detect it as having _failed_. The difference is covered
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in more detail [here](/intro/getting-started/agent.html#toc_3).
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