Resilience

The suite of Genesys Cloud application services is deployed in multiple independent AWS regions worldwide. Services run in an active/active/active mode across a minimum of three AWS Availability Zones (AZs) per region to maximize resiliency.

An AZ consists of one or more discrete data centers, allowing us to operate production environments that are more highly available, fault tolerant and scalable than would be possible from a single data center. Redundancy is built into the fabric of the system with each AZ having separate power, backbone network connectivity, replicated data memory and (in some cases) physical separation spanning tectonic fault plates. This multi-zone high availability helps protect against geographic and environmental risks.

Genesys has undertaken extensive work in the design of our platform services to provide fault-tolerance and automatic mitigation of potential issues. Genesys Cloud is built on a single code base comprised of hundreds of microservices that each perform a specific function. These microservices operate independently, so a problem with one does not affect another — greatly limiting the potential for problems.

Genesys Cloud microservices run on Amazon EC2 and AWS Lambda. Each microservice instance runs on its own EC2 instance or Lambda function, and each microservice has multiple instances running in separate AZs. Amazon ELBs load balance requests across the microservice instances and detect failed instances within seconds, routing requests to other instances. The EC2 instances are also in Amazon Auto Scaling groups (ASGs), which scale up the number of instances to meet demand automatically and replace failed instances with new healthy instances in minutes.

Genesys Cloud resiliency is continually validated through a rigorous quality assurance process. We proactively test failure and recovery paths using automated chaos testing and fire drills — conducting hundreds of experiments daily. This allows us to anticipate and ultimately prevent failures so they don’t impact you.

To further enhance reliability, our production environment is immutable. Changes must be made in lower environments and pushed to production. This approach improves reliability by guaranteeing the systems tested in pre-production are functionally identical to those deployed in production.

Genesys Cloud uses Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) to ensure long-term durability and availability of your data. Information is redundantly stored on multiple devices across a minimum of three AZs within an AWS Region. In addition to database clusters, Genesys Cloud makes heavy use of DynamoDB. DynamoDB is highly available, with automatic and synchronous data replication across a minimum of three AZs in an AWS region.

Genesys Cloud uses multiple cache clusters for caching data from databases and external services to make Genesys Cloud responsive. The nodes in each cluster spread across multiple AZs so that the loss of a single AZ does not bring down the cluster. If any node in the cluster fails, then the other nodes take over the failed node’s work in seconds. If a complete cache cluster fails, then the cache cluster can be redeployed and begins caching data from the data’s home of record in minutes.

Genesys creates backups of critical customer data according to documented backup procedures. Backup data is not stored on portable media. Backup data is stored in Amazon S3 with server-side encryption in the same AWS region where customer data resides. Backup restoration tests are performed annually.

By applying software engineering principles to infrastructure and operations, our SREs continuously monitor, optimize and improve system performance, availability and scalability. The SRE team collects and analyzes data from multiple sources to identify potential threats and respond proactively — helping to minimize service disruptions. In the event of service-impacting incidents, customer notifications and updates are posted to our Genesys Cloud system status page. Post analysis is performed for critical incidents to determine the root cause, document actions taken and implement countermeasures to prevent recurrence.

Resilience is embedded in our operational culture. Giving engineering teams ownership over the services they build leads to more thoughtful design, faster recovery, continuous learning and a stronger reliability mindset. Our reliability is backed by a service level agreement (SLA), offering up to a 100% credit guarantee.

Genesys Cloud offers hot, warm and cold business continuity models designed to meet diverse customer needs. Each option provides different levels of recovery speed and operational complexity to minimize downtime.

Maintaining business continuity is a partnership between you, Genesys and AWS. Together, Genesys and AWS provide highly available service and resilient infrastructure; however, unplanned events can happen. It’s important for you to establish clear recovery time objectives and ensure business operations in the event of an unplanned disruption.