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Zonal placement allows you to select the specific availability zone in which your Azure Files storage account resides. If desired, you can place your virtual machines (VMs) in the same zone to reduce latency between compute and storage.
This feature is currently available only for premium storage accounts (SSD media tier) using locally redundant storage (LRS) in supported regions.
Note
This article applies to classic Azure file shares only (Microsoft.Storage). Zonal placement isn't currently possible for file shares created with the Microsoft.FileShares resource provider (preview).
Prerequisites
This article assumes that you have an Azure subscription. If you don't have an Azure subscription, then create a free account before you begin.
Region support
Zonal placement is supported for premium storage accounts with LRS redundancy in the following Azure regions:
- Asia East
- Canada Central
- Central US
- Chile Central
- East US
- Germany West Central
- Indonesia Central
- Israel Central
- Italy North
- Japan West
- Malaysia West
- Mexico Central
- New Zealand North
- Qatar Central
- Poland Central
- South Africa North
- South Central US
- Spain Central
- West US 2
- West US 3
How zonal placement works
When creating a new premium storage account, you can create either a regional or zonal storage account. A zonal storage account is placed in a specific availability zone within a supported Azure region, offering guaranteed data locality. Zonal placement can also potentially reduce latency and improve performance for your workload if you place your compute resources (VMs) in the same zone as your storage account.
You can only specify a specific zone when creating a new storage account. Existing storage accounts can only be pinned to a zone selected by Azure. Once a storage account is pinned to a zone, it can only be moved back to a regional configuration. For example, if your storage account is pinned to zone 1, you can't move it to zone 2 or zone 3.
Create a new zonal storage account
You can create a new zonal storage account using the Azure portal or PowerShell.
Follow these steps to create a new zonal storage account using the Azure portal.
Sign in to the Azure portal.
Navigate to Storage accounts and select + Create.
On the Basics tab, select the Azure subscription and resource group, or optionally create a new resource group.
Enter a name for the storage account. The name must be unique across all existing storage account names in Azure. It must be 3 to 24 characters long, and can contain only lowercase letters and numbers.
Select a region. Make sure it's on the supported list for zonal placement.
Under Preferred storage type, select Azure Files.
Under Performance, select Premium.
Under File share billing, select the desired option.
Under Redundancy, select Locally redundant storage (LRS).
If the selected region supports zonal placement, a Zone options dropdown appears. It offers three choices:
- None: Creates a regional storage account.
- Self-selected zone: Enables a secondary dropdown to select a specific availability zone (1, 2, or 3).
- Azure-selected zone: Azure automatically assigns zone 1, 2, or 3.
Choose the desired option and proceed with storage account configuration.
When configuration is complete, select Review + Create, and then select Create.
Pin an existing storage account to an Azure-selected zone
You can also pin an existing premium storage account to an Azure-selected availability zone by using the Azure portal or PowerShell. Once pinned, the storage account won't be moved.
Important
Existing storage accounts can only be pinned to availability zones that are automatically selected by Azure. You can't choose a specific zone number.
Follow these steps to pin an existing storage account to an Azure-selected zone using the Azure portal.
Sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to the premium storage account that you want to pin.
On the Overview tab, select Availability.
The Move storage account availability zone pane opens. A dropdown next to the storage account name appears with two options:
- Azure-selected zone
- None (to use the regional storage account configuration)
Choose Azure-selected zone, and then select Move.
The storage account will now be pinned to the selected zone, as reflected in the Availability section on the Overview tab.
Unpin a storage account from a zone
You can also unpin a storage account from a zone and then convert the zonal storage account to a regional storage account. This is a prerequisite if you want to move the storage account from LRS to zone-redundant storage (ZRS), for example.
You can unpin a storage account from a zone by using the Azure portal or PowerShell.
Follow these steps to unpin a zonal storage account from a zone using the Azure portal.
Sign in to the Azure portal and navigate to the zonal storage account that you want to unpin.
On the Overview tab, select Availability.
The Move storage account availability zone pane opens. A dropdown next to the storage account name appears with two options:
- Azure-selected zone
- None (to use the regional storage account configuration)
Choose None, and then select Move.
The storage account will now be unpinned from the zone, as reflected in the Availability section on the Overview tab. If desired, you can now change the redundancy setting for the storage account from LRS to ZRS.