Solution Background

In a certain financial institution, the traditional active-standby disaster recovery (DR) model faced challenges such as low resource utilization, long failover times, and inability to meet RPO/RTO requirements. As the enterprise transitions to cloud-native and microservices-based application architectures, a dual-active high-availability disaster recovery solution based on Cisco ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) has become the core foundation for ensuring zero business interruption. By building a distributed ACI Fabric across data centers, the company enables dual-active deployment and automated failover to support 24/7 availability for critical services.

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Solution Overview

This solution is based on the Cisco ACI Multi-Site architecture and constructs a unified policy-managed dual-active network across two or more data centers:

  • Dual-Active Architecture: Uses an Active-Active model where business traffic is load-balanced across multiple sites, avoiding single points of failure.
  • Policy Synchronization: Automates synchronization of network, security, and application policies via Multi-Site Orchestrator (MSO), ensuring consistent configurations.
  • Intelligent Traffic Steering: Leverages GSLB (Global Server Load Balancing) and ACI Service Graph to select the optimal path for service traffic.
  • Fast Disaster Recovery Switching: Achieves sub-second failover in case of failure through health checks and BGP route optimization.
  • Unified O&M: Centralized management of multi-data center networks via ACI controllers, with visual monitoring and automated operations.

Key Advantages

  • Zero Business Interruption: Dual-active architecture ensures seamless failover if one financial data center fails.
  • Policy Consistency: Automated cross-site policy synchronization prevents human error.
  • Elastic Scalability: Supports flexible expansion to meet growing business needs.
  • Intelligent Operations: End-to-end visual monitoring and fast fault localization.
  • Open Compatibility: Supports hybrid cloud, containerized, and legacy applications—protecting existing investments.

Customer Challenges

  • Traditional DR failover is time-consuming and recovery is difficult
  • Low resource utilization in active-standby mode leads to high O&M costs
  • Complex cross-data center network configurations and policy management
  • Inability to meet stringent financial industry RTO/RPO requirements
  • Lack of unified management in multi-cloud/hybrid environments

Customer Benefits

  • High Availability: Enables zero-interruption for critical business operations
  • Efficient Resource Utilization: Dual-active mode improves infrastructure usage
  • Reduced O&M Costs: Automated policy management minimizes manual work and boosts efficiency
  • Regulatory Compliance: Meets requirements of MLPS 2.0 and financial industry DR standards
  • Future-Ready: Supports cloud-native and containerized architectures, enabling digital transformation