Serf Join

Command: serf join

The serf join command tells a Serf agent to join an existing cluster. A new Serf agent must join with at least one existing member of a cluster in order to join an existing cluster. After joining that one member, the gossip layer takes over, propagating the updated membership state across the cluster.

If you don't join an existing cluster, then that agent is part of its own isolated cluster. Other nodes can join it.

Agents can join other agents multiple times without issue. If a node that is already part of a cluster joins another node, then the clusters of the two nodes join to become a single cluster.

Usage

Usage: serf join [options] address ...

You may call join with multiple addresses if you want to try to join multiple clusters. Serf will attempt to join all clusters, and the join command will fail only if Serf was unable to join with any.

The command-line flags are all optional. The list of available flags are:

• -replay - If set, old user events from the past will be replayed for the agent/cluster that is joining. Otherwise, past events will be ignored.

• -rpc-addr - Address to the RPC server of the agent you want to contact to send this command. If this isn't specified, the command will contact "127.0.0.1:7373" which is the default RPC address of a Serf agent.

Replaying User Events

When joining a cluster, the past events that were sent to the cluster are usually ignored. However, if you specify the -replay flag, then past events will be replayed on the joining cluster.

Note that only a fixed amount of past events are stored. At the time of writing this documentation, that fixed amount is 1024 events. Therefore, if you replay events, you'll only receive the past 1024 events (if there are that many).