Terracotta servers exist in two modes, active and passive. The description of each mode is given below.

Within a given stripe of a cluster, there is always an active server. A server in a single-server stripe is always the active server. A multi-server stripe will only ever have one active server at a given point in time.

The active server is the server which clients communicate with directly. The active server relays messages on to the passive servers independently.

When a stripe starts up, or a failover occurs, the online servers perform an election to decide which one will become the active server and lead the stripe. For more information about elections, see the section Electing an Active Server.

Clients will attempt to connect to each server in the stripe, and only the active server will accept the connection.

The client will continue to only interact with this server until the connection is broken. It then it attempts the other servers if there has been a failover. For more information about failover, see the section Failover.

The active server differs from passive servers in that it receives all messages from the clients. It is then responsible for sending back responses to the calling clients.

Additionally, the active server is responsible for replicating the messages that it receives on the passive servers.

When a new server joins the stripe, the active server is responsible for synchronizing its internal state with the new server, before telling it to enter a standby state. This state means that the new server is now a valid candidate to become a new active server in the case of a fail-over.

Any stripe of a cluster which has more than one server will contain passive servers. While there is only one active server per stripe, there can be zero, one, or several passive servers.

Passive servers go through multiple states before being available for failover:

Passive servers only communicate with the active server, not with each other, and not with any clients.

When a stripe starts up and a server fails to win the election, it becomes a passive server.

Additionally, newly-started servers which join an existing stripe which already has an active server will become passive servers.

The passive server has far fewer responsibilities than an active server. It only receives messages from the active server, not communicating directly with other passive servers or any clients interacting with the stripe.

Its key responsibility is to be ready to take over the role of the active server in the case that the active server crashes, loses power/network, or is taken offline for maintenance/upgrade activities.

All the passive server does is apply messages which come from the active server, whether the initial state synchronization messages when the passive server first joined, or the on-going replication of new messages. This means that the state of the passive server is considered consistent with that of the active server.

When a passive server first joins a stripe and determines that its role will be passive, it is in the UNINITIALIZED state.

From here, the active server begins sending it messages to rebuild the active server's current state on the passive server. This puts the passive server into the SYNCHRONIZING state.

Once the entire active state has been synchronized to the passive server, the active server tells it that synchronization is complete and the passive server now enters the STANDBY state. In this state, it receives messages replicated from the active server and applies them locally.

If the active server goes offline, only passive servers in the STANDBY state can be considered candidates to become the new active server.