The ICE Patch Server is responsible for linking the audio of two or more channels together such that a talk-burst transmitted on one channel can be heard on the others, too. By default, a patch server is automatically installed inside the Kubernetes cluster when ICE Server is installed, but additional patch servers can be installed elsewhere in the network.

When a patch is created in the ICE Desktop client, the patch is assigned to a specific patch server (the choice of server is made by the user creating the patch). The patch remains associated with that patch server for its lifetime. If the patch server is deleted or otherwise becomes non-functional, ICE does not attempt to automatically relocate or migrate the patch to another server. However, in the case of a patch server crash, the process will automatically restart and resume patching (the entire restart process typically takes less than 10 seconds).