ClusterControl GUI
The ClusterControl GUI is a web-based interface that simplifies the deployment, monitoring, and management of database clusters. Developed by Severalnines, it offers a unified console for common database technologies such as MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB. Instead of juggling multiple command-line tools or separate dashboards, database administrators can perform end-to-end cluster lifecycle tasks from a single, intuitive environment.
With the GUI, you can:
- Provision new clusters through step-by-step wizards
- Monitor health and performance via real-time metrics, customizable dashboards, and alerts
- Automate backups and upgrades to maintain high availability
- Scale out by adding nodes and load balancers through a few clicks
- Integrate security best practices with user management and audit logs
Whether you’re managing a single small cluster or multiple enterprise-grade deployments, the ClusterControl GUI provides the automation, observability, and orchestration needed to keep your databases running optimally — all from one central location.
Accessing the GUI
After ClusterControl is successfully installed, you may access the ClusterControl GUI at https://<ClusterControl_IP_address_or_hostname>/ using a web browser.
If ClusterControl is installed using the Helm chart, you need to connect to the FQDN value defined in the values.yaml (or by using the --set parameter). For example, in the following ClusterControl installation:
After the deployment succeeds, you can access the ClusterControl GUI by going to https://clustercontrol.example.com, provided this FQDN is resolvable to Kubernetes load balancer EXTERNAL-IP value of clustercontrol-ingress-nginx-controller service. If fqdn flag is undefined, it defaults to localhost. Hence, you have to do DNS mapping of host localhost to resolve to the Kubernetes load balancer IP address and access via browser using https://localhost.
Attention
For Helm chart deployment, the ClusterControl GUI must be accessed via domain name, hostname or FQDN (configurable by --set fqdn=<domain_name/fqdn>). Accessing directly using load balancer IP address or Kubernetes port-forward option will result with a "page not found" error, since the GUI access is proxied by an ingress controller service and not a web server.
User registration page
For a new installation, you will be redirected to the user registration page. This is where you set up the first admin user, with a valid email address to receive alerts via email. In the next section, provide personal information and consent with the product's terms and condition and privacy policy. Click Complete to complete the user registration.
Once registered, you will be automatically logged in as the newly created admin user into ClusterControl.
Login page
If there is no active user session (or the session has expired), ClusterControl will default on viewing the login page. Enter a valid username and password to login.
If this is a new installation, you will be redirected to the user registration page instead. See User registration page.
Forgot password
If you forget your password, you can use the ClusterControl CLI to reset the user's password. This action must be performed by any user under the ClusterControl admin group.
Connect to the ClusterControl server via SSH, and run the following command:
Once done, you may login again using the new password set above.
Home
This is the default start-up page after a user has successfully logged in. It presents a summary of database clusters and nodes managed by ClusterControl, bounded by the user's group permission. In the main panel, you will see 3 main sections for clusters, nodes and alarms.
Legend:
- Orange box: Navigation bar
- Green box: Sidebar
- Red box: Main panel
- Blue box: Footer
In the Home page, here are its key sections:
- The donut chart summarizes the clusters' state.
- A compact table listing clusters by ID, name, and status:
- Auto-recovery: Whether ClusterControl can automatically recover the cluster or node if a failure occurs. See Failover and Recovery.
- Warnings/Critical: Number of issues requiring attention.
- Status: Cluster status.
- The donut chart shows a summary of total nodes and how many are online or have warnings/failures.
- A honeycomb grid representing each node’s current state (green for online, red for failed and yellow for warning).
- Rollover on a honeycomb cell will pop up a card displaying more information about the node.
- Lists active alerts or alarms.
- If everything is running smoothly, you might see "No alarms".
Each card often has a View.. or Details.. link, taking you to a more detailed page. For example, View clusters, View nodes, or View alarms.
Tips
- Hover and Click: Many charts or icons are interactive - hover to see node details, click to drill down.
- Filtering and Sorting: In lists (e.g., the Clusters list), you can often filter by status or sort by name/ID.
- Always Check the Events/Alarms: They’re a quick way to spot issues before they become critical.
Navigation bar
The top navigation bar provides quick access to ClusterControl's common functionalities. It also displays the breadcrumbs for cluster list and notification banners. If you click sidebar's Clusters and click on a cluster, the breadcrumbs will appear on the navigation bar visualizing the current path you are at.
Deploy a cluster
Clicking on the Deploy a Cluster button at the top-right area will give users two more options, as shown in the following screenshot:
- Create a database cluster – Use this deployment wizard to deploy a new database cluster or server. See Create Database Cluster.
- Import a database cluster – Use this deployment wizard to import your existing database cluster or server. See Import Database Cluster.
Activity center
Next to the Deploy a Cluster button is an icon (commonly appeared with a small red counter) called Activity center. Clicking on it will expand the quick view of activity center where you can see the latest alarms, jobs and audit logs. There are also Actions button associated with every entry where you can perform certain actions according to the entry's type.
User profile
The top-right corner provides quick access to the current user's profile. It provides the timezone information, email address and the full name (in first name, last name format) with quick access to profile management, license management and the logout page.
Sidebar
The left sidebar provides all ClusterControl global menus. It is collapsible and expandable by clicking the < or > icon at the bottom.
Clusters
Clicking on Clusters will expand the list of all database clusters managed by ClusterControl. Click on one of the clusters will open the individual cluster section on the main panel.
Nodes
Provides global overview of all nodes for all clusters managed by ClusterControl.
You can filter the list by cluster and node's status, by clicking on the filter icon in the respective columns. You can also perform node's management tasks by clicking on the Actions button.
Read more
Backups
The Backups page in ClusterControl provides a centralized view of all backup tasks, schedules, and storage repositories in your environment. It allows you to create new backups, manage existing ones, and review completed jobs. This page is essential for ensuring data safety and for streamlining backup operations.
Here are its key sections:
- Create backup – Clicking this opens a wizard or form to initiate a new backup job, schedule a backup or create a new Elasticsearch snapshot repository (specific to Elasticsearch backups). See Create Backup.
- All Backups – Lists all completed or in-progress backups for all clusters. You can customize the display columns by clicking on the View button.
- Schedules – Shows the schedules configured for automatic or recurring backups for all clusters.
- Elastic Repositories – (Specific to Elasticsearch backups) Lists all Elasticsearch snapshot repositories.
Read more
Activity center
Provides global view of all alarms, jobs and audit logs for all clusters managed by ClusterControl.
Operational reports
The operational reports feature provides a comprehensive overview of your database cluster’s performance, health, and key metrics, delivering valuable insights to ensure optimal database operations. This feature generates detailed, time-based reports that highlight crucial aspects of your database environment, allowing you to monitor and review system performance, resource usage, and database health at a glance.
With the operational reports, you can:
- Gain insights into resource utilization, such as CPU, memory, disk, and network usage.
- Monitor cluster performance metrics, including query throughput, replication lag, and load.
- Track backup operations, alerting on failures or potential risks in the backup schedule.
- Receive a summary of database status, including uptime, availability, and incident occurrences.
- Customize reports to focus on specific time periods or key performance indicators.
These reports empower database administrators to make informed decisions by providing critical information for troubleshooting, capacity planning, and performance tuning. They can be scheduled to run automatically or generated on-demand, making it easy to stay on top of your database operations and ensure the long-term reliability and efficiency of your database clusters.
User management
Manage ClusterControl users, teams and authentication integration with directory services (LDAP or Active Directory).
Read more
Settings
Provides global settings for the ClusterControl instance.
Profile
Manage the current user's profile and time zone settings. The user's time zone reflects how ClusterControl displays the date and timestamp in the application.
Updating user's profile
Click on Settings will open
Change password
Click on the Change password and specify the current password and the new password accordingly. Click Change to proceed.
If you want to reset the user's password instead, login as a user belongs to "admins" group and go to ClusterControl → User management → choose a user → Actions → Change password.
Cloud storage credentials
The Cloud storage credentials tab provides a centralized location for managing credentials used to store and retrieve backups from supported cloud providers. By configuring valid credentials here, you can automate backup uploads to, and downloads from, various cloud platforms.
The supported object storage platforms are:
- AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Azure Blob Storage
- Google Cloud Storage
- S3-compatible object storage like MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, Openstack Swift and SeaweedFS.
Cloud storage integration relies on other ClusterControl modules called cmon-cloud and clud. These binaries are provided by clustercontrol-cloud and clustercontrol-clud packages.
Read more
Notification services
Manage the integration with third-party notification and messaging platform on events triggered by ClusterControl. This feature allows you to integrate ClusterControl alerts into your organization's communication channels, incident response systems, workflow management systems or event-driven applications via webhook calls. You can configure the notifications to be sent out to all or specific clusters, or to all or specific alert severity like error or warning alerts.
Notification service relies on another ClusterControl module called cmon-events. This binary is provided by package clustercontrol-notifications.
Read more
Certificate management
Manage all keys and certificates of all clusters managed by ClusterControl. In this section, you can generate a new certificate authority (CA), generate a new self-signed certificate or import existing certificates into the certificate repository. The certificates imported or generated here can then be assigned to any cluster managed by ClusterControl.
Read more
License
View and manage the details of your ClusterControl license. From this section, you can check if your license is active, identify how many nodes you can manage under the current license, and update the license key as needed.
The following table explains the fields shown in this section:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| License | Displays the edition of ClusterControl (e.g., ClusterControl Enterprise). |
| Status | Indicates whether the license is currently Active or Expired. |
| License owner | Shows the organization or individual that owns the license. |
| Expiration date | The date and time when the license will expire. Once this date passes, ClusterControl may revert to a restricted mode unless renewed or updated. |
| License owner's email | Contact email for the entity that owns the license. Usually used for support or renewal discussions. |
| Nodes limit | Displays how many database server nodes are currently managed compared to the total limit available under the license (e.g., 12/unlimited nodes). See Licensed nodes |
Updating license key
For users with a valid subscription (Advanced and Enterprise), enter your license key by clicking on the Enter a license key button to unlock additional features based on the subscription. The license string contains information about the license type, company/affiliation, email, expiration date, and the total number of licensed nodes.
The following example is license information that one would get from us:
Email: [email protected]
Company: Severalnines AB
Expiration Date: 2019-04-23
Licensed Nodes: 1
License Key: ewogICAgImNvbXBhbnkiOiAiU2V2ZXJhbG5pbmPkIEFCIiwKICAgICJlbWFpbF9hZGRyZXNzIjog
InRlc3RAc2VRZXJhbG5pbmVzLmNvbSIsCiAgICAiZXhwaXJhdGlvbl9kYXRlIjogIjIwMTktMDQt
MjNUMDA6MDA6MDAuMDAxWiIsCiAgICAibGljZW5zZWRfbm9kZXMiOiAtMSwKICAgICJ0eXBlIjog
IkVudGVycHJpc2UiCn0Ke3M5cy1zaWduYXR1cmUtc2VwYXJhdG9yfQp0RUew5OZKV8SqmmwiQEzT
P+qTNnmCphirIVm7MriA/aCdlJYQcr1NJr4nvTNcSmgu4uFVf3Ufv4olHr4wrBq0/Js9Rm8bJWZo
BO8svHzQhCmIVEWcTYub362krjRyREnOGXaqWwUnvkZ0uUCT+WDaM1P9qn/HawoNd0e8E0+7WiZK
CpwjH+ESqSEppeu/Ewzf3p0C0e8WZbwHtZ9UmX2qJNQq9NDlByrO8FtbVjOOL4zTbc8jV0W2DWzY
1swzOgeyk+7N2eGVRWfdUSzudQSXkT3LA4cdV2HAsU5QLnmKxSCgg+jq+RQJiPwdPXEr3gzjzJzV
+qhmOZ5tTN+WABPy9l3kpztlCbkfzO84/4lM7Z3c4rQ8snMTu6RvD2M+oh/4lhvR8M9RrQQcl8JF
RX2Ak1ZAKxAXkJ97Z5U7nIzuyUGuMTCXdKGEtQkBXzpIcYFvXDeWu0MUks+EULpqG+OFnl+rSZa0
nNTSW3mR/f9B+4e2mK4y2OpJhh4rWPXR1DLpLVLk/2p0o64aEizA+IPe0TP+ox7bFzEfAXirVWfC
/Ol7m1k6arRbl8PSV1DRRcefM+UsABa6jypoiit+JXNPOajdjY1WBgEekCn/jeXBBoPM2k26274u
br0BuHULLkxGSpC8I2/nW6s84E653FO1Kpbvyx+2SKJxwUxLiuEZ2g==
Only paste the license key string (starting after the License Key: part) into the license text field. Click Apply license key to activate the license into runtime. No service restart required.
Licensed nodes
The following nodes' type will be counted as licensed nodes by ClusterControl:
- MySQL/MariaDB/Galera Cluster database nodes
-
PostgreSQL/TimescaleDB/EDB database nodes(1)
- EDB requires appropriate licensing from the vendor. Kindly get the database license ready prior to the deployment.
-
ProxySQL nodes
- Redis database (or shard) nodes
- Valkey database (or shard) nodes
-
MongoDB Community/Enterprise database (or shard) nodes(1)
- MongoDB Enterprise requires appropriate licensing from the vendor. Kindly get the database license ready prior to the deployment.
-
SQL Server database nodes(1)
- SQL Server requires appropriate licensing from the vendor. Kindly get the database license ready prior to the deployment.
-
Elasticsearch master-eligible and data nodes
A "node" is an instance of database or proxy process. For PostgreSQL, ClusterControl supports managing multiple instances per host. Each PostgreSQL instance (host:port pair) is considered as one node.
The following nodes' type are NOT counted as licensed nodes:
- Load balancers/Connection pooler - HAProxy, PgBouncer, MariaDB MaxScale and Keepalived nodes
- MongoDB sharded cluster - MongoDB mongos, config server and arbiter nodes
- Monitoring - Prometheus, VictoriaMetrics nodes
- Backup-related nodes - Backup verification server, Elasticsearch snapshot repository nodes, pgBackRest repository nodes, Percona MongoDB Backup shared storage nodes
- ClusterControl nodes and ClusterControl multi-controller nodes
Best Practices and Notes
-
When the license expires, ClusterControl defaults back to the Community Edition. For features comparison, please refer to the ClusterControl product page. Your database cluster will remain operational after a license is expired.
-
If you would like to force the existing Enterprise edition to the Community edition (commonly to test out and compare different editions during trial), you can truncate the license table on the ClusterControl host manually. On the ClusterControl server, run:
Warning
Once a trial license is truncated and the
cmonservice is restarted, there is no way to re-activate the same trial license anymore. -
ClusterControl will raise an alarm if a license is about to expire within 30 days (as well as a reminder banner when you logged in ClusterControl). Configure the mail server accordingly to receive the alarm via email. Ensure you renew your license before expiration to avoid interruptions in production management.
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If you exceed your node limit, you may not be able to add additional nodes. Contact your license provider or Severalnines account manager to upgrade if you anticipate growth beyond the current limit. Severalnines also offers volume license and custom licensing options depending on the use cases and requirements.
-
If you experience any issues related to licensing, you may contact Severalnines support directly and provide the license's owner email address.
-
After updating your license key, consider refreshing your browser to confirm that all license-related features are enabled and loaded correctly.
Diagnostics
Enable 'UI Audit Data Collection' to record and capture the necessary data while reproducing an issue in the user interface. Once the issue has been replicated, download the audit data for analysis. Remember to switch off the setting afterward to stop audit data collection.
Read more
Changelog
Open the ClusterControl changelog page in Severalnines documentation center. It often shows release highlights, version-specific changes, release notes, and recent updates.
Footer
The footer displays information about the components' version that you are running on. For example:
© Copyright Severalnines 2025 All Rights Reserved.
Controller:2.3.0.11678. Buildv:2.3.0 sha:a60dc4e5 b:1788 n:release-cc-2.3.0
The above means in this particular setup, the running components are:
- ClusterControl Controller v2.3.0 and build number is 11678
- ClusterControl GUI v2.3.0, commit hash is a60dc4e5 and build number is 1788
Give Us Feedback
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