What is Meeting Survivability

Zoom Hybrid Meeting Survivability is a new feature delivered through the Zoom Meetings Hybrid (ZMH) module. This module leverages the platform and OS provided by Zoom Node, which is distributed as a Linux-based virtual appliance spun up on a supported hypervisor (ESXi, KVM, RHOS, AWS EC2). In addition to the hybrid meeting functionality that ZMH provides, Meeting Survivability allows organizations to have an on-premise failover for their Zoom Meetings Hybrid system.

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Learn more about Zoom Meetings Hybrid

This article covers:

How does the Meeting Survivability functionality work with ZMH

Meeting Survivability requires the on-prem deployment of Zoom Node running ZMH and supports hybrid and private meetings running on the system.

Meeting Survivability does not affect the hybrid meeting service during normal operations. When connectivity between the ZMH module and the Zoom cloud is lost, the system administrator can activate survivability mode. This will allow clients and devices in survivable meeting zones to communicate with their assigned service module and maintain a subset of meeting features when connectivity to the Zoom cloud is lost. When connectivity to the Zoom cloud has been reestablished and is stable, Survivability mode may be deactivated.

Administrators who need to utilize Meeting Survivability can access the service's web server locally and enable Survivability mode. This mode allows users to join meetings using the Zoom Meetings Hybrid service.

Learn more about deploying the Meeting Survivability service

Use cases for the Meeting Survivability service module

Meeting Survivability is designed to serve as a backup plan in strategic locations that house employees who would need to be able to join meetings with each other during an outage. Outages up to 30 days in length are supported.

Customers may want to deploy Zoom Node and ZMH in locations like these:

Supported Survivable Meeting Types

Meeting Survivability supports several types of meetings during an outage:

Currently running Hybrid or Private meetings: If cloud connectivity is lost, the meeting will reconnect after a brief interruption. If this meeting was a hybrid meeting, where some users are on cloud resources and others are on internal (ZMH) resources, the meeting would split, and internal users would be reconnected. Internal users will be notified that there is an outage and the system has gone into a survivable state.

Pre-defined “Emergency Response” Meetings: Once the system has been put into survivable mode, pre-defined “emergency meetings” will be activated. If these meetings are public, they will appear on a roster of available meetings in the Zoom client. Typically, these predefined meetings are used by groups or departments to communicate during the outage (i.e., emergency response huddle). An example would be a predefined emergency meeting for the IT team. In an outage, they could use this meeting to work together to solve it.

Personal Meeting Rooms: For Personal Meeting Rooms designated as survivable, new meetings may be started during an outage. Meeting attendees must be manually provided with join details if they do not already have them.

Ad-hoc Meetings: Meetings may be started during an outage. Meeting attendees must be manually provided with join details if they do not already have them.

Scheduled Meetings (Prior to the Outage): For any meetings already planned as survivable before the outage, users with network connectivity to the ZMH system can join them as they are accustomed to from the Zoom client.

Scheduled Meetings (During the outage): For many customers who use cloud services for email and calendaring, scheduling a meeting during the outage will typically not be possible.

Supported Meeting functionality during a meeting failover

End-user functionality during periods of cloud service disruption will always be limited compared to normal operations due to some features being dependent on the Zoom Cloud. The following features are supported during failover: