Managing Nodes

A node (sometimes called AppNode) is a physical or virtual machine that can run applications. Technically, the node is a member of a Kubernetes cluster.

Nodes overview

To display the nodes registered into your Great Bear deployment, open the Great Bear dashboard, then select Nodes.

For every node, the dashboard shows the following information:

• Status: Status of the node, for example, Ready or Node not online.
• Node name: A descriptive name of the node. To change the name of the node, see Configure node.
• Hardware ID: Hardware identifier. This is a unique identifier of the node.
• Description: Description of the node (if any). To change the description of the node, see Configure node. This column is hidden by default.
• Assigned to site: The site the node belongs to. Click on the site name to show information about the selected site in a sidebar. For free nodes that are not assigned to any site, Not assigned is shown. To assign the node to a site, select Assign to site and see Add node to site.

Select a node to display this information in a sidebar.

To register a new node in Great Bear, see Register new node.

You can customize the data displayed in the table by showing or hiding columns. Click on the settings icon in the header and select Show columns

To find specific node, you can:

• Use the column headers to sort the table
• Use the Search field to display matching nodes. You can search every data about the node, including metadata and tags.

Node lifecycle

In general, the lifecycle of a node consists of the following steps.

1. Physically install the node.
2. Register the node in Great Bear.
3. Assign the node to a site. Now the node is ready to run workloads.
4. Deploy applications to the site of the node. Great Bear will assign workload to the node as needed.
5. (Optional) If you do not use the node anymore (for example, because of hardware failure), you can delete the node from Great Bear.

Node status

The status of the node is one of the following:

Icon	Message	Description	Code
	Node not bootstrapped	The node has been registered in the dashboard but not yet bootstrapped. Bootstrap the node	NO_STATUS
	Node is initializing	The node is in the process of being registered and bootstrapped into Great Bear. Wait until it is finished	IN_PROGRESS
	Node is not assigned to a site	The node is registered in Great Bear but not assigned to any site yet. Assign the node to a site	CLAIMED
	Successfully started	The node is operational and ready to receive application workload	RUNNING
	Node is in an error state	An error occurred and the node is not functioning properly. See Node Errors. Reboot the node. If the error persists, check the logs of the node for details, or reinstall the node	ERROR
	Node offline	The node is powered off or is not accessible for some other reason, for example, because of a network error. Check the network accessibility and network configuration of the node	OFFLINE