The Zoom Meetings Hybrid (ZMH) enables customers to deploy Zoom meeting components into their network (behind their firewall) and keep either all or most of the meeting media on-premises, using the Zoom Node platform. This allows internal users to connect to a local hybrid server, while external users can still join via the Zoom Cloud in most scenarios. The ZMH also improves user network security by providing media edge capability.
In addition to allowing a more secure and flexible way of hosting meeting multimedia streams, the Zoom Meeting Hybrid module also supports additional meeting services, including:
The Zoom Meetings Hybrid (ZMH) modules enable customers to deploy Zoom Meetings components within their network, keeping most or all of a meeting’s media on-premises. This allows internal users to connect to a local hybrid server, while external users will continue to join via the Zoom Cloud. ZMH also improves user network security by providing media edge capability.
For a typical meeting, with multiple internal users as meeting participants, the internal users’ media is distributed within the network, with only one link to the Zoom Cloud to extend the meeting to external users. This helps reduce the internet bandwidth requirements for customers with large meetings. For calls that include external participants, these participants will join via Zoom’s cloud-hosted environment. For multimedia routing, a bi-directional UDP connection will be established between the internal servers and Zoom’s cloud-hosted environment.
The Zoom Meetings Hybrid service is delivered via two Meeting Hybrid components. The first component is the Hybrid Zone Controller Proxy (HZCP), which communicates with the Zoom Cloud and directs users to the appropriate multimedia router (MMR). Users within the network are then directed to the second component, the Hybrid Multimedia Router (HMMR). Users who join externally will continue to connect to a Zoom Cloud MMR.
In Hybrid mode, the Zoom Meeting Hybrid (ZMH) processes meeting media locally for on-prem users and allows external users to join meetings through the Zoom cloud. In this mode, the ZMH also enables the consumption of cloud-delivered services, including whiteboarding, live streaming, transcription and translation, and recording.
For regular hybrid meetings, the ZMH service relays media locally to internal attendees and enables cloud cascading for overflow and external guest joining. Although the service can redistribute a meeting’s media, it does not handle client-to-cloud signaling connections during regular hybrid meetings. Users connected to a Meetings Hybrid appliance will continue to establish a bandwidth-light signaling connection with the meeting’s cloud server for in-meeting data and operations, such as starting a cloud recording or updating the participant list.
In Private mode, the ZMH provides complete localization of the meeting media and signaling processing. In this mode, the ZMH does not support cloud media cascading, keeping all media and signaling on-premises. Additionally, by default, users in Private meetings cannot access Cloud services (e.g., Whiteboard, AI Companion). However, administrators can allow users to still access Cloud services in Private Mode.
While by default, Private mode is designed for internal users to join meetings, administrators can configure the Hybrid Zone Controller Proxy to allow external access via NAT. This allows external users to join Private meetings while still keeping the multimedia on-premises.