What Is the Difference Between Active‑Active and Active‑Passive Architectures?

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What Is the Difference Between Active‑Active and Active‑Passive Architectures?

Active-active architecture involves multiple servers or nodes running simultaneously to share the workload and ensure continuous availability, whereas active-passive architecture has one primary active server with standby backups that only activate when the primary fails.

In both cases the goal is high reliability and minimal downtime, but each approach balances performance, cost, and complexity differently.

Active-active setups treat all machines as “hot” and load-balanced, while active-passive setups keep backups idle until needed.

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