Managing Clusters

A Cluster in FixPanic represents a logical grouping of computing resources where your agents run. Think of clusters as environments (like "Production" or "Staging") that organize your infrastructure.

What is a Cluster?

Clusters serve several purposes:

• Organization - Group agents by environment, project, or function
• Isolation - Keep production and development separate
• Credentials - Each cluster has unique credentials for agent deployment
• Monitoring - Track health and status at the cluster level

Infrastructure Flexibility

FixPanic is infrastructure-agnostic. A cluster can represent:

• A single VPS or VM
• A dedicated bare-metal server
• Multiple servers in a data center
• Cloud instances (AWS, GCP, Azure)

Creating a Cluster

1. Navigate to the Clusters page from the sidebar
2. Click the "Create Cluster" button
3. Enter cluster details:
   • Name: A friendly identifier (e.g., "Production-East", "Dev-Environment")
   • Description: Optional notes about the cluster's purpose
4. Click "Create"
5. Save your credentials immediately:
   • Agent ID: Unique identifier for this cluster
   • API Key: Authentication key for agents

Warning: The API key is only shown once! Save it immediately. If lost, you'll need to regenerate it.

Cluster Health

Clusters have health indicators based on agent connectivity:

Health Checks

Agents periodically send "heartbeats" to the FixPanic platform:

• Healthy: Heartbeat received within the last minute
• Unhealthy: No heartbeat for more than 5 minutes

Cluster Actions

From the Clusters List

Click the actions menu (three dots) on any cluster row:

Pausing a Cluster

When you pause a cluster:

• No new agents can be deployed to it
• Existing agents continue running
• The cluster is marked as "Paused" in the UI

This is useful for:

• Maintenance windows
• Temporarily disabling a test environment
• Preparing for migration

Deleting a Cluster

Important: You must delete all agents in a cluster before you can delete the cluster itself.

To delete a cluster:

1. Navigate to the cluster's detail page
2. Delete all agents in the cluster (or move them to another cluster)
3. Return to the cluster settings
4. Click Delete Cluster and confirm

Cluster Detail View

Click on a cluster name to see its detail page:

Overview Tab

• Cluster health status
• Number of active agents
• Creation date
• Last activity

Agents Tab

• List of all agents in this cluster
• Quick actions for each agent
• Deploy new agent button

Settings Tab

• Edit cluster name and description
• View/regenerate credentials
• Delete cluster

Filtering Clusters

On the Clusters page, you can filter by:

Best Practices

Naming Conventions

Use clear, consistent naming:

• prod-us-east - Production in US East region
• staging-main - Main staging environment
• dev-team-alpha - Development for Team Alpha

Environment Separation

Tip: Always keep production and development clusters separate. This prevents accidental commands from affecting production systems.

Credential Management

• Never share API keys across clusters
• Rotate keys periodically
• Store keys securely (secrets manager, environment variables)
• Never commit keys to version control

Troubleshooting

Cluster Shows "Unhealthy"

1. SSH into your server where the agent is installed
2. Check if the agent process is running:

   fixpanic agent status

3. Restart the agent if needed:

   sudo systemctl restart fixpanic-connectivity-layer

4. Check network connectivity:

   nc -zv socket.fixpanic.com 9000

Can't Create New Cluster

• Check your subscription plan for cluster limits
• Ensure you have sufficient credits
• Contact support if the issue persists

Next Steps

• Managing Agents - Deploy and manage agents within your clusters.
• First Deployment - Deploy your first agent to a cluster.