Managing heartbeat messages in a cluster is similar to managing them in a high availability (HA) configuration. Nodes can send and receive heartbeat messages to and from each other on all interfaces that are enabled. To avoid increased traffic resulting from heartbeat messages, you can now disable the heartbeat option on node interfaces. However, the heartbeat option on the backplane interface cannot be disabled, because it is required for maintaining connectivity among the cluster nodes.

For more information about managing heart messages, see Managing High Availability Heartbeat Messages on a NetScaler Appliance.