Synchronous replication is a data synchronization method that ensures data consistency and integrity across primary and secondary storage devices by writing data simultaneously to both locations, making it essential for scenarios like financial and healthcare applications where zero data loss is critical. This method requires a high-speed network connection, which can increase infrastructure costs and network latency, often necessitating that sites be in close geographic proximity. In contrast, asynchronous replication writes data to the primary site first, with a delayed transfer to the secondary site, making it suitable for long-distance data centers with higher latency, though it risks data loss if a failure occurs during the delay. Near-synchronous replication offers a middle ground, providing almost real-time data protection with a slight delay, reducing performance impact while maintaining data integrity. Organizations must carefully assess their infrastructure, cost, and performance needs when choosing between these replication strategies, considering factors like data integrity, network requirements, and recovery objectives. Aerospike's active-active synchronous replication combines high availability and strong consistency for global disaster recovery and workload management, offering sub-millisecond performance and high availability.