The Extron VCA 100 Virtual Control Appliance is designed for centralized AV control across an organization. Typically deployed in AV/IT-managed environments such as network rooms or data centers, the VCA 100 enables flexible control of multiple systems without the need to deploy and manage traditional servers or virtual machines. This reduces maintenance requirements and scheduled downtime.
The new VCA 100 redundancy capability also enhances operational flexibility by enabling a secondary VCA 100 appliance to act as a backup, automatically taking over in the event of a failure of the primary system. This creates a high-availability virtual control system that continues functioning during failover without requiring user intervention.
To configure redundancy, the backup VCA 100 must meet the following requirements:
- The backup appliance must include at least the same number of Virtual Control Processors (VCPs)
- Matching LinkLicenses must be enabled on corresponding VCPs
- Both VCA 100 appliances must run the same firmware version
- Both appliances must reside on the same subnet
Once these conditions are met, redundancy can be enabled through the VCA 100 web interface. After configuration values are entered and validated, additional redundancy-specific settings become available to complete the setup.
In addition to automatic failover, the system supports redundancy-aware monitoring. Alarm conditions within the redundant system can generate notifications, allowing support personnel to respond quickly to system events.
If a failure occurs, whether due to power, network, or hardware, the hosted control systems will continue running on the backup VCA 100 with minimal disruption. After the issue is resolved, redundancy can be restored using the configurations and programs on the backup system or by reestablishing the primary unit.