# Pause/resume Percona XtraDB Cluster

There may be external situations when it is needed to shutdown the Percona
XtraDB Cluster for a while and then start it back up (some works related to the
maintenance of the enterprise infrastructure, etc.).

The `deploy/cr.yaml` file contains a special `spec.pause` key for this.
Setting it to `true` gracefully stops the cluster:

```yaml
spec:
  .......
  pause: true
```

Pausing the cluster may take some time, and when the process is over, you will
see only the Operator Pod running:

``` {.bash data-prompt="$" }
$ kubectl get pods
NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
percona-xtradb-cluster-operator-79966668bd-rswbk   1/1     Running   0          12m
```

To start the cluster after it was shut down just revert the `spec.pause` key
to `false`.

Starting the cluster will take time. The process is over when all Pods have
reached their Running status:

``` {.text .no-copy}
NAME                                               READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
cluster1-haproxy-0                                 2/2     Running   0          6m17s
cluster1-haproxy-1                                 2/2     Running   0          4m59s
cluster1-haproxy-2                                 2/2     Running   0          4m36s
cluster1-pxc-0                                     3/3     Running   0          6m17s
cluster1-pxc-1                                     3/3     Running   0          5m3s
cluster1-pxc-2                                     3/3     Running   0          3m56s
percona-xtradb-cluster-operator-79966668bd-rswbk   1/1     Running   0          9m54s
```