Abstract: The current structure for starting and shutting down a server is complicated and affords little administrative control. A server must be started in one long-running step and cannot be shutdown without risk of disrupting in-flight work. The ability to bring up a server quickly and bring down a server gracefully is crucial to improving availability. A server configuration in which a server that is brought up as a hot-stand by server for a running, active server can significantly reduce downtime (failover time) in the case of an outage. A server that can be suspended gracefully can be removed from service without disrupting clients. These new features require improvements to the server lifecycle to clearly articulate the distinction between an initialized server and an active server (for hot standby) and between a suspending server and a suspended server (for graceful suspend) and to simplify the lifecycle by removing circular initialization dependencies between services and clarifying the lifecycle contract.