I want to know some specific informations about my Azure Storage

Question

Hi MSFT Team,

I could see that My Storage account Redundancy is set as LA-GRS.

I need the following clarifications:

1. I read that it offers 3 copies in Local Region plus 3 readable copies in the paired Azure region. But can you guide me how I can access the replicated data even if there is no disaster?
2. In the event of disaster, how much time does it take for the replicated region to become the primary? Does it require any manual intervention from our side?
3. How can we mimic a Disaster recovery scenario? So that we can see how it's going to work in real time?

Thanks in advance,

Avi

Answer 1

Hi, Avishek.

Azure Storage offers two options for copying your data to a secondary region:

• 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.
• Geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS) copies your data synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region using ZRS. 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.

On your second note, about how much time and whether it requires manual intervention - is 'it depends' on the type of outage being experienced.

If its a regional disaster, Microsoft will do this for you and redirect the primary DNS across - so you don't need to do anything, but you can also trigger this failover process yourself.

You can also access the secondary region at any time (in read only) using a secondary URL, this could be useful to check your replication time.

Take a look at the Last Sync time as well.

"Because geo-replication is asynchronous, it is possible that data written to the primary region has not yet been written to the secondary region at the time an outage occurs. The Last Sync Time property indicates the last time that data from the primary region was written successfully to the secondary region"