Redundant Switcher

Redundancy allows you to set up two switchers where one mirrors the other. In the event of a failure of the primary switcher, the redundant switcher can take over.

The redundancy is broken up into two system, the Sender and the Listener. The Sender is the primary system that is used to produce content. The Listener is the redundant system that mirrors the actions of the primary system. If something happens to the Sender and it is not available, you can switch over to using the Listener to continue your production.

The status of the redundancy connection is show in the Connected field on the Redundancy menu:

  • Healthy (Green) — connection is good and both Sender and Listener are functioning normally.
  • Partial (Yellow) — Listener is configuring or there is a resource mismatch between the Sender and Listener.
  • Down (Red) — bad or broken connection between the Sender and Listener. Redundancy is not functioning.
Tip:
It is recommend to create custom controls to allow you to quickly configure the Listener as the primary and the Sender as disabled. This involves setting Redundancy on both devices to Disabled, activating external device connection on the new primary system, and disabling external device connections on the failing Sender. Refer to Custom Control Events for more information on custom controls.
Tip:
GPI outputs can also be trigger with custom controls to perform actions the other switcher, the router, and on external devices.

Keep the following in mind:

Keep the following in mind when setting up and working with switcher redundancy:

  • Redundancy does not change Ultrix™ settings. When you switch over to the Listener, you must ensure that the router is configured for the new routes.
  • The Sender and Listener systems must be identical for full redundancy. If the system are not identical, the Listener will use the resources it has to mirror the Sender.
  • A reliable network connection between the Sender and Listener is required for constant monitoring.
  • When redundancy is triggered, the Listener must be set to Disabled to take over as the primary system. This prevents the Listener system from acting erratically if the Sender system comes back online. It is recommended to set up a custom control on the Listener to take over control in this situation.
  • The Listener and Sender switchers do not need to be in the same video mode.
  • The Sender transmits incremental changes to the Listener.
  • The Sender transmits the complete state of the switcher to the Listener when the connection is first established and ever couple of minutes after that.
  • When controlling external devices from the Sender, it is important to have redundant devices or redundant connections to the same devices. For example, set up control over a robotic camera from both system but disable the control from the Listener until it is needed. In this example it is important to also disable control from the Sender device when using the Listener as the primary.
  • When a switcher reboots, the Redundancy Mode is reset to Disabled. This prevents a Sender from trying to re-establish control over the Listener when it comes back up after a fail-over.
  • Media​-Store captures should not be part of redundant system operation. Some elements, such as file naming and media number, are set by the switcher independently and can differ between the Sender and Listener. It is recommended to copy the media items from the Sender to the Listener and ensure that the file names and media numbers are the same.
  • Device configuration settings are not sent from the Sender to the Listener. Devices must be set up independently on each switcher.