Azure Files secondary region

WinTechie 281

Hi,

I have a GP V2 storage account with RA-GRS redundancy, but I do not see secondary endpoint for file service which is available for other services like Blob, queue, table etc.

How do I ensure that my backups stored (Oracle RMAN) in Azure files are asynchronously replicated to other region for disaster recovery scenarios, considering site recovery agent is not supported run on my oracle Linux VM.

SaiKishor-MSFT 17,176 Reputation points

2023-01-27T07:21:53.25+00:00

@WinTechie I am reaching out to see if you have any further questions. If so, please let us know and we will be glad to assist further. If the below answer was helpful, please make sure to Accept it as answer as it helps other members in the community. Thank you!
Sumarigo-MSFT 43,401 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2023-01-30T13:06:40.27+00:00

@WinTechie Just checking in to see if the below answer helped. If this answers your query, do click Accept the answer”, which might be beneficial to other community members reading this thread. And, if you have any further query do let us know.

1 answer

Alan Kinane 16,781 Reputation points MVP

2023-01-10T15:40:36.703+00:00

Azure Files does not have RA-GRS support currently. So your Azure Files data should still be replicated to a secondary region but it will not be read accessible.

"In the event of a major disaster such as the permanent loss of an Azure region due to a natural disaster or other similar event, Microsoft will perform a failover and the secondary becomes the primary, serving all operations. Since the replication between the primary and secondary regions are asynchronous, in the event of a major disaster, data not yet replicated to the secondary region will be lost. You can also perform a manual failover of a geo-redundant storage account."

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/files/storage-files-planning#redundancy
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WinTechie 281 Reputation points

2023-01-11T09:45:44.49+00:00

Thanks for the response.

However I wanted to know, how can I perform restoration of Azure files from secondary region without me OR MS initiating a failover. this is required for DR drill/mock activities as part of BCP readiness, I am open for any other alternative solutions.

As I mentioned previously, I am sending hourly oracle DB backup to these Azure files, so I want to test restoration from secondary region which is not possible through usual approach (Azure site recovery test failover) due to unsupported oracle Linux kernal version.

I have considered Azure backup cross region restores also, but this causes higher RPO value as frequency of full backup is every 24 hours and hourly archived RMAN backups aren't supported by Azure backup, hence i have it configured on server level to send it to Azure files.

SaiKishor-MSFT 17,176 Reputation points

2023-01-20T23:37:46.5633333+00:00

@WinTechie As mentioned above, Azure Files does not support RA-GRS currently therefore data cannot be restored at the moment and you will have to failover to the secondary region. Unfortunately, from an Azure Files side, there isn't an option at the moment for automatic restoration.
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