The hitless failover configuration involves grouping two inputs in a "Failover Group". If the two inputs are identical (i.e. two or more binary-identical streams with synchronized RTP headers), when one of them is disrupted or interrupted completely, Zixi Broadcaster will seamlessly use the packets of the other input without any disruptions.

Note

If the streams are not identical, the failover process will not be seamless and may take up to a second.

A Failover Group can comprise two or more inputs. In a group of three or more, you can define one or more streams as a "Backup". In this case the system will always try to recover packets from "Primary" streams first and only if there are no available primary streams, it will use the backup streams. When one of the primary streams becomes available, the system will automatically jump to the primary stream.

While the Broadcaster GUI only enables configuration of primary streams at a single priority level, through the Zixi Broadcaster API it is possible to assign different priorities as follows:

Priority 0 – means backup. It will be used only if all other streams are unavailable.
Priority greater than 0 - means primary.

Note

Failover between streams that have different priorities, even primary streams, will not be seamless and may take up to a second.

The Failover Group has its own Stream ID, just like an Input Stream, and will appear in the Inputs list.

Although the topology above shows only one Zixi Broadcaster, it is also possible to have multiple targets (e.g. two or more Zixi Broadcasters), each with its own Failover Group of inputs to enable a more complete system-level redundancy.

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