Best Azure Storage Solution

Question

i need recommend on a data storage solution . It needs to meet the following requirements.,

• accessible to application via REST connection.
• tables hosting with varying size and patterns.
• automatically replicate data to a secondary region

can you confirm if i should use - "An Azure storage account that uses geo-redundant replication" or "An Azure storage account that uses read-access-geo-redundant replication", where i can make use of of the table service or is there any alternate solution.

The option should be cost optimized.

Answer 1

Hi @Ankit Rathod

To replicate data to a secondary region you can use geo-redundant storage (GRS), When you enable read access to the secondary region, your data is available to be read at all times, including in a situation where the primary region becomes unavailable.

Geo redundant storage account
Geo-redundant storage (GRS) copies your data synchronously three times within a single physical location in the primary region using LRS. It then copies your data asynchronously to a single physical location in the secondary region. Within the secondary region, your data is copied synchronously three times using LRS.
ZRS provides excellent performance, low latency, and resiliency for your data if it becomes temporarily unavailable. However, ZRS by itself may not protect your data against a regional disaster where multiple zones are permanently affected. For protection against regional disasters, Microsoft recommends using geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS), which uses ZRS in the primary region and also geo-replicates your data to a secondary region.
Refer- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-redundancy

The following diagram shows how your data is replicated with GRS or RA-GRS:

Read access to data in the secondary region
Geo-redundant storage (with GRS or GZRS) replicates your data to another physical location in the secondary region to protect against regional outages. However, that data is available to be read only if the customer or Microsoft initiates a failover from the primary to secondary region. When you enable read access to the secondary region, your data is available to be read at all times, including in a situation where the primary region becomes unavailable. For read access to the secondary region, enable read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) or read-access geo-zone-redundant storage (RA-GZRS).

Use geo-redundancy to design highly available applications

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Answer 2

HI @SUNOJ KUMAR YELURU .,

Thanks for your response.

Below is my understanding.

GRS - Using the geo-redundant storage (GRS) option your data is replicated 3 times within the primary region and is also replicated 3 times in a secondary region hundreds of miles away from the primary region. In the event of a failure at the primary region, Azure Storage will failover to the secondary region.

RA-GRS - Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) not only replicates your data to a secondary geographic location but also provides read access to your data in the secondary location(unlike GRS). RA-GRS allows you to access your data from either location, in the event that one location becomes unavailable.

NOTE : Main difference between GRS and RA GRS is fairly simple, GRS only allows to be read in the secondary zone in the event of a failover from the primary to secondary while RA GRS allows the option to read in the secondary whenever you want., hence RA-GRS is an expensive option.

Hence Cost Optimized Solution is GRS, please confirm..