SIP Business Continuity Architecture
SIP Business Continuity provides the ability for a group of agents to continue offering critical business functions to customers in the event of a loss of all Genesys components running at a particular site. The SIP Business Continuity architecture uses a synchronized, two-site deployment, where Genesys switch and server components are mirrored at each site in an active-active configuration, so that any agent can log in to either switch, at any time.
The Business Continuity Overview figure shows the basic connections between SIP Server instances and endpoints across the redundant sites.
What Does It Do?
SIP Business Continuity includes (though not limited to) the following functions:
- Work area redundancy
- Disaster Recovery
- Graceful Migration
For regular call processing, agent activity can be load-balanced across the two sites, or you can configure agents to use one preferred site over the other. In the event of a failure at one site (a SIP Server HA pair or all Genesys components go down), agents connected to the failed site are re-logged in automatically to the surviving site. Although any active calls on the failed site are terminated at the moment of failure (including calls on the surviving site that include the failed SIP Server in the signaling path), the surviving site is able to process all new calls, with minimal impact to queue wait times.
Note: Business Continuity does not provide recovery for the local failure of particular agent endpoints or workstations. It is intended to provide redundancy for Genesys components only.
Note: Alcatel-Lucent 4000-series IP Phones do not support dual registration. Instead, an active-backup registration scheme is used to handle disaster recovery scenarios. Special configuration for these phones is required. For more information, see Using IP Phones with SIP Server in Business Continuity Mode.
SIP Server Peers
A pair of primary and backup SIP Server instances are deployed at each site, providing local high availability (HA). For Business Continuity, these dual HA pairs are known as SIP Server Peers. The SIP Server Peers rely on synchronized configuration for all agent-related objects: Extension DNs, Places, Agent Logins (and the references to their related User or Person object). Each agent desktop is configured with a "Preferred Site", indicating to which site it should connect if possible.
Synchronizing Configuration Objects
Using Genesys Administrator, you can synchronize all agent-related configuration object (DNs of certain types, Places, Agent Logins and the reference to their associated User or Person) between the SIP Server Peers.
Synchronization applies to the following configuration objects:
- ACD Position DN
- ACD Queue DN
- Call Processing Port DN
- Extension DN
- Agent Login
After you run the synchronization once, Genesys Administrator will automatically synchronize any further configuration changes of Places and Users between the SIP Peers--as long as the changes are made using Genesys Administrator.
SIP Phones
Business Continuity only supports SIP endpoints that are able to maintain dual registrations--one registration for each site (Alcatel 4000-series phones are the exception). For outbound 1pcc calls, one of the sites is considered "preferred" based on either 3rd-party configuration on the phone itself, or based on DNS SRV record priority.
For Alcatel 4000-series phones, an active-backup registration scheme is used--where the phone registers to the SIP Server on the backup site only if the primary is unavailable.
For details, see Using IP Phones with SIP Server in Business Continuity Mode.
Agent Desktop
The agent desktop maintains a login to a single site at one time. Typically, the agent desktop logs into the "Preferred Site" specified in the desktop configuration, but it will log in to the other peer if both the preferred site is unavailable and the SIP endpoint switches registration to the backup site. The agent desktop maintains a basic connection (no login) to the backup peer site.
For more information, see the Interaction Workspace 8.1 Deployment Guide.