---
title: "xCluster - Native asynchronous replication"
url: "https://docs.yugabyte.com/stable/explore/going-beyond-sql/asynchronous-replication-ysql/"
---

# xCluster - Native asynchronous replication

Multi-region deployment using asynchronous replication across multiple data centers.

Asynchronous replication between independent YugabyteDB universes

By default, YugabyteDB provides synchronous replication and strong consistency across geo-distributed data centers. A cross-universe (xCluster) deployment provides high throughput asynchronous replication across two data centers or cloud regions.

xCluster provides the following benefits:

- **Low write latency**: With synchronous replication, each write must reach a consensus across a majority of data centers. This can add tens or even hundreds of milliseconds of extra latency for writes in a multi-region deployment. Asynchronous replication with xCluster reduces this latency by eliminating the need for immediate consensus across regions.
- **Only two data centers needed**: With synchronous replication, to tolerate the failure of `f` fault domains, you need at least `2f + 1` fault domains. Therefore, to survive the loss of one data center, a minimum of three data centers is required, which can increase operational costs. For more details, see [fault tolerance](/stable/architecture/docdb-replication/replication/#fault-tolerance "fault tolerance"). However, with async replication you can achieve multi-region deployments with only two data centers.
- **Disaster recovery**: By replicating data asynchronously to a secondary region, xCluster provides a robust disaster recovery solution, allowing for quick failover and minimal data loss in case of a regional outage.

xCluster is always active-active, allowing you to read data from any region. It supports both single-master and multi-master deployment options, offering flexibility to balance write performance and consistency guarantees.

Active-active single-master xCluster: ![example of single-master deployment](/images/architecture/replication/active-standby-deployment-new.png "example of single-master deployment")

Active-active multi-master xCluster: ![example of multi-master deployment](/images/architecture/replication/active-active-deployment-new.png "example of multi-master deployment")

For more information, see the following:

- [xCluster architecture](/stable/architecture/docdb-replication/async-replication/ "xCluster architecture")
- [xCluster vs Geo-Partitioning vs Read Replicas](/stable/explore/multi-region-deployments/ "xCluster vs Geo-Partitioning vs Read Replicas")
- [Deploy xCluster](/stable/deploy/multi-dc/async-replication "Deploy xCluster")
- [Change data capture (CDC)](/stable/architecture/docdb-replication/change-data-capture/ "Change data capture (CDC)")