BCDR Approach for Microsoft Purview

Question

Hi,

Currently, Microsoft Purview does not possess inherent BCDR capabilities. Microsoft’s recommendation is to establish an additional Purview account in a different region and carry out all activities in both regions.

I would like to seek some clarifications regarding BCDR:

1. Suppose our organization has set up a Microsoft Purview Account under the Microsoft Azure Enterprise subscription in the Australia-East region. Would the Purview account be provisioned in three different Availability Zones within the Australia region? If so, is Purview’s multi-AZ feature enabled by default?
2. Let’s assume our organization uses Purview with 100 metadata objects, and one of the data centers (i.e., one of the Availability Zones) is affected by natural disasters while the other two Availability Zones remain unaffected. Would our Purview account continue to operate with the 100 metadata objects from the unaffected Availability Zones?
3. Suppose our organization uses Purview with 100 metadata objects, and all data centers are affected by natural disasters (all data centers are down in the Australia region). Would our Purview account be inaccessible during this period? Once the data centers have recovered, would our organization be able to resume using Purview along with the 100 metadata objects?
4. Suppose our organization uses Purview with 100 metadata objects, and all data centers are affected by natural disasters (all data centers are down in the Australia region). Let’s say all the data centers have completely disrupted, would our organization losses all the Purview configuration along with the 100 metadata objects?
5. From the standpoint of BCDR, our organization is interested in understanding the customer’s shared responsibilities. Our business operates solely in the Australia region, and we do not wish to expand our operations outside of Australia, as it could violate our data policy.

Thanks, Ram

Answer 1

@Ram Murugan - Thanks for the question and using MS Q&A platform.

Based on the document: Microsoft Purview disaster recovery, and migration best practices, Microsoft Purview does not support automated BCDR. Until that support is added, you are responsible for taking care of backup and restore activities. You can manually create a secondary Microsoft Purview account as a warm standby instance in another region.

To answer your questions:

• The document does not mention whether the Purview account is provisioned in three different Availability Zones within the Australia region or whether Purview's multi-AZ feature is enabled by default. You may want to check with Microsoft Azure support for more information on this.
• If one of the data centers (i.e., one of the Availability Zones) is affected by natural disasters while the other two Availability Zones remain unaffected, your Purview account should continue to operate with the 100 metadata objects from the unaffected Availability Zones.
• If all data centers are affected by natural disasters (all data centers are down in the Australia region), your Purview account would be inaccessible during this period. Once the data centers have recovered, you should be able to resume using Purview along with the 100 metadata objects.
• If all data centers are affected by natural disasters (all data centers are down in the Australia region) and all the data centers have completely disrupted, your organization may lose all the Purview configuration along with the 100 metadata objects. This is why it is important to have a disaster recovery plan in place.

Regarding your shared responsibilities, as a customer, you are responsible for setting up a secondary Microsoft Purview account in another region and carrying out all activities in both regions. Microsoft recommends that you manually create a secondary Microsoft Purview account as a warm standby instance in another region.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.