UCaaS Redundancy: Active-Active vs. Active-Spare
Last week we published a video to the SkySwitch YouTube Channel that explained the architecture of our geo-redundant network. Soon afterwards, someone asked me how our redundant architecture is different from other white label UCaaS providers. So, I made this short video to explain what distinguishes the SkySwitch network from our competitors.
The difference boils down to scalability and elasticity – two hallmarks of a true multi-tenanted cloud solution – made possible by our active-active architecture. As network traffic grows, SkySwitch adds capacity by deploying additional active nodes. New nodes are added to an n-Share mesh and automatically become available to share call processing tasks across all nodes dynamically and with zero downtime. This means that we can expand to accommodate growth with zero impact on the availability of services to end users. With Skyswitch, endpoints can access identical service across multiple geographically diverse servers (geo-nodes) in real-time.
SkySwitch white label resellers have access to utilize any of our geo-nodes at any time because all the nodes are part of a mesh that distributes call events, and other information needed to support calling features, in real time. With seamless and transparent failover between nodes, service disruptions are avoided because customer connections can be automatically transferred to any other nodes available. This means that when a problem occurs, failover can be almost immediate. Often, customers don’t even realize that a glitch occurred because the failover happens so quickly.
In contrast, other providers use an older method of redundancy called active-spare (or sometimes referred to as n+1). With an active-spare network, only one server can be active at any time. In the event of a problem all calling logic must be transferred to the spare server. In a large network with hundreds of servers, failover requires a high degree of orchestration that can take precious time. Providers that use active-spare technology require significantly more time to activate a spare server when a problem occurs. This process can take hours and sometimes even days!
To learn more about the SkySwitch active-active geo-redundant network, view the original video here.