VCS ensures that global service group operations are conducted serially to avoid timing problems and to ensure smooth performance. The Authority attribute prevents a service group from coming online in multiple clusters at the same time. Authority is a persistent service group attribute and it designates which cluster has the right to bring a global service group online. The attribute cannot be modified at runtime.

If two administrators simultaneously try to bring a service group online in a two-cluster global group, one command is honored, and the other is rejected based on the value of the Authority attribute.

The attribute prevents bringing a service group online in a cluster that does not have the authority to do so. If the cluster holding authority is down, you can enforce a takeover by using the command hagrp -online -force service_group. This command enables you to fail over an application to another cluster when a disaster occurs.

You must seed authority if it is not held on any cluster.

Offline operations on global groups can originate from any cluster and do not require a change of authority to do so, because taking a group offline does not necessarily indicate an intention to perform a cross-cluster failover.