# Using a witness server with repmgrd

In a situation caused e.g. by a network interruption between two data centres, it's important to avoid a "split-brain" situation where both sides of the network assume they are the active segment and the side without an active primary unilaterally promotes one of its standbys.

To prevent this situation happening, it's essential to ensure that one network segment has a "voting majority", so other segments will know they're in the minority and not attempt to promote a new primary. Where an odd number of servers exists, this is not an issue. However, if each network has an even number of nodes, it's necessary to provide some way of ensuring a majority, which is where the witness server becomes useful.

This is not a fully-fledged standby node and is not integrated into replication, but it effectively represents the "casting vote" when deciding which network segment has a majority. A witness server can be set up using repmgr-witness-register. Note that it only makes sense to create a witness server in conjunction with running repmgrd; the witness server will require its own repmgrd instance.