Teams (app) and Voice

[SatSanger]

We are looking to implement Teams Direct Routing voice along with the current Teams implementation. However, we have a few reservations regarding single point of failure, so the question is:-

- If Teams fails/goes down, do you also lose the voice network (direct routing) where the carrier is non Microsoft (unlike Call Plan)?

- Does Team (app) and Voice work together or separately using different infrastructure?

We would like to have contingency where the app and voice network work independently.

Thank -you in advance.

Sat

[#2]

If you use a certified SBC with SBA (Survival Branch Applicance) included, then you can have local failure in the event of a Teams / Upstream outage. You can read more about it here:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/direct-routing-survivable-branch-appliance

There are some Direct Routing providers that offer failover services as well. Obviously for any of this failover to work, you must be using Direct Routing.

In terms of infrastructure, the Teams team goal is to make everything a microservice. Won't get into the weeds but there are a ton of safeguards in place now for an outage that will prevent a Teams outage.

[#3]

Thank-you @rbrynteson. Apart from a local failure, is there anything stopping a single point of failure for Teams (app) and Teams (voice) within O365/Azure? Whereby, my phone system will continue if there is a Teams outage? We have had a Teams outage many times before and just want to make sure my telephone system continues to work even though the app has failed.

TIA

Sat 

[#4]

@SatSanger A few options of course.

- From the SBC side, you can deploy multiple SBC's on premises for Direct Routing.  So if a single one fails, you have a backup.

- Those SBCs can both have an SBA

- You get into the Teams down or Client Issues problems.  Teams itself down, happens rarely.  Its been several months (maybe a full year???) since there was an Azure outage that took down Teams.  Now there are Teams client issues, which although feel like the root service, is actually a client / workstation issue due to rapid updates, electron, etc.  Some organizations do deploy a handful of desk phones to critical employees who can't miss a call, even through a reboot of the workstation to clean up those issues.

- It's a cloud service, so it's impossible to say you can prevent ANY outage.  But I've found that an SBC + SBA option does decrease the potential.

Richard