Active-Active and Active-Passive Failover Strategies

A critical component of multi-region architecture is how traffic is handled during a disaster.

Active-Passive (Disaster Recovery)

In this model, one region serves all traffic while a secondary region remains on standby. If the primary fails, traffic is routed to the secondary.

• Pros: Simpler data synchronization, lower cost.
• Cons: Slower failover, wasted resources in standby.

Active-Active

Both regions serve traffic simultaneously.

• Pros: Maximum resource utilization, zero-downtime failover.
• Cons: Extremely complex data synchronization, higher risk of split-brain scenarios.

RTO and RPO

We will define and calculate the acceptable downtime (RTO) and acceptable data loss (RPO) for various enterprise scenarios.