Status flickering using "vault status"

Vault
1

I have a weird behavior when I repeat consecutively the command vault status I can see the HA Mode being different and flickering between Active and Standby while the node is Active. Any idea?

[root@vault-testenv-1 ~]# vault status
Key                      Value
---                      -----
Recovery Seal Type       shamir
Initialized              true
Sealed                   false
Total Recovery Shares    5
Threshold                3
Version                  1.10.4
Storage Type             postgresql
Cluster Name             testenv-vault
Cluster ID               fcf0fe39-9ef7-56c0-11dd-e0a28814a639
HA Enabled               true
HA Cluster               https://172.16.2.59:8201
HA Mode                  active
Active Since             2022-06-14T19:54:17.184230617Z

[root@vault-testenv-1 ~]# vault status
Key                      Value
---                      -----
Recovery Seal Type       shamir
Initialized              true
Sealed                   false
Total Recovery Shares    5
Threshold                3
Version                  1.10.4
Storage Type             postgresql
Cluster Name             testenv-vault
Cluster ID               fcf0fe39-9ef7-56c0-11dd-e0a28814a639
HA Enabled               true
HA Cluster               https://172.16.2.59:8201
HA Mode                  standby
Active Node Address      https://vault-testenv-1.my-domain.com

[root@vault-testenv-1 ~]# curl -sk https://localhost:8200/v1/sys/health |jq .
{
  "initialized": true,
  "sealed": false,
  "standby": false,
  "performance_standby": false,
  "replication_performance_mode": "disabled",
  "replication_dr_mode": "disabled",
  "server_time_utc": 1655236542,
  "version": "1.10.4",
  "cluster_name": "testenv-vault",
  "cluster_id": "fcf0fe39-9ef7-56c0-11dd-e0a28814a639"
}
2

By chance is your VAULT_ADDR a VIP to a LB? If so you’re hitting different nodes. There is only one “active” node (in charge of writing to the backend) , the rest are standby (read-only and will forward any write requests to the leader node).

3

Haha right, spot on, thanks that was indeed the case, I have the LB address in the env var. thanks and sorry =)