Redundancy in ZEN Master

ZEN master supports multi-level redundancy to ensure availability of the content delivery. Your deployment may include multiple redundant Target hosts. You can configure both the Channel (which outputs the content from ZEN Master) and the Target (which receives the content) for redundancy. Redundancy of sources can be configured in Pass-Through Channels and redundancy of hosts can be configured in Push or RTMP Targets. This feature is relevant for single bitrate push outputs only. Pull outputs enable any host to access the stream.

ZEN manages the various configurations as follows:

• 1 Source → 1 host - if there is one Source in the Channel and one host in the Target then the content is sent directly from the Source to the host and the content is available as long as both elements are active. In this case, you don't need to configure a Secondary Source in the Channel nor an Alt. Target.
• 1 Source → 2 hosts - if there is a single Source in the Channel and there are two hosts in the Target, the content is sent from the Source to the primary host as long as it is available. If the primary host becomes unavailable then the Source is sent to the alternate Target host. In this case, you don’t need to configure a Secondary Source, but will need to configure an Alt. Target.
• 2 Sources → 1 host – if there are two Sources in the Channel and one host in the Target then two outputs are created (one on each Broadcaster) and both are pushed to the same Target host. The host receives the output from the primary Source as long as it is available. If the primary Source becomes unavailable, then the host receives output from the secondary Source. Some services such as Akamai do not support output of multiple Sources to a single host. In this case, you need to configure a Secondary Source, but will not need to configure an Alt. Target.
• 2 Sources → 2 hosts – if there are two Sources in the Channel and two hosts in the Target then two outputs are created (one on each Broadcaster) and each is pushed to a different host. As long as all elements are active the content is available on both hosts. If one path fails, then the other path remains available. For this configuration, the Channel status remains OK as long as one of the paths is active. In this case, you need to configure a Secondary Source and configure an Alt. Target. If you would like to monitor the status of each path separately, you must create two separate Channels and send each one to a different Target. Then you will have two completely independent pathways for delivering identical content.