Active-active vs active-passive
Active-passive data has one primary that takes writes and a standby that waits. If the primary dies, something has to promote the standby — that is failover. Active-active data has no single primary: every region can accept writes, and consensus prevents two regions from silently disagreeing. Briovela Free is active-passive at the data layer. Paid plans are true active-active data. The application tier is active-active on both.
Last updated 2026-09-10
What “passive” is waiting for
A standby replica is useful. It is not write-anywhere. Until it is promoted, it does not take your new jobs, invoices, or messages. Promotion is fast when it works, and it is still a step.
That is the honest R1 baseline: redundant application servers, a primary database, a standby, backups, and point-in-time recovery. It is real high availability. It is not RPO zero.
What “active” at the data layer buys you
Consensus-based distributed SQL (the R2 posture) orders writes so two regions cannot both “win.” A CRM field a person just edited is not silently discarded. That is why we prefer this family over last-update-wins replication for the system of record.
FAQ
Questions this page answers
- Is a multi-region website the same as active-active data?
- No. Serving pages from two regions is active-active compute. True active-active data means both regions also accept writes with no promotion step.
- Why not put Free on true active-active data too?
- Multi-region consensus has a cost floor. Free stays on single-region high availability so paid plans can carry the write-anywhere posture honestly.
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