Red Hat Cluster developers contribute code upstream for the community.
The primary form of communicating node status is via a network device (commonly Ethernet), although in the case of possible network failure, quorum can be decided through secondary methods such as shared storage or multicast.
The node is terminated by removing power (known as STONITH) or access to the shared storage.
Earlier versions of the cluster suite relied on a "grand unified lock manager" (GULM) which could be clustered, but still presented a point of failure if the nodes acting as GULM servers were to fail.
The product has no activation, time limit or remote kill switch, it will remain working after the support life cycle has ended.