Azure Storage stores multiple copies of your data so that it’s protected from planned and unplanned events, including transient hardware failures, network or power outages, and massive natural disasters. Redundancy ensures that your storage account meets its availability and durability targets even in the face of failures.
The services that comprise Azure Storage are managed through a common Azure resource called a storage account. The storage account represents a shared pool of storage that can be used to deploy storage resources such as blob containers (Blob Storage), file shares (Azure Files), tables (Table Storage), or queues (Queue Storage). For more information about Azure Storage accounts, see Storage account overview.
In this blog post I will explain the different redundancy options available when configuring an Azure Storage Account, but in the form of a diagram to simplify the options.
The redundancy options available when configuring a Storage Account include,
LRS – Locally Redundant Storage
GRS – Geo Redundant Storage
RA-GRS – Read Access Geo Redundant Storage
ZRS – Zone Redundant Storage
GZRS – Geo Zone Redundant Storage
RA-GZRS – Read Access Geo Zone Redundant Storage
The diagram below includes two Azure regions, UK South and UK West. UK South includes three Availability Zones. Click the image below to enlarge.
Towards the left I have listed the different storage redundancy options in different colours.
LRS (Locally Redundant Storage) = Red
ZRS (Zone Redundant Storage) = Green
GRS (Geo Redundant Storage) and RA-GRS (Read Access Geo Redundant Storage) = Purple
GZRS (Geo Zone Redundant Storage) and RA-GZRS (Read Access Geo Zone Redundant Storage – Orange
Note: Availability Zones are not available in all Azure Regions
Depending on which storage redundancy option you select, I have displayed the number of copies replicated using coloured circles.
For example, for LRS (Local Redundant Storage) highlighted red on the diagram, your data will be replicated three times in a single datacentre/Availability Zone.
Click image below to enlarge
If you wish to learn more about Azure Storage Accounts, visit the links below,
- AZ-104: Implement and manage storage in Azure – Learn | Microsoft Docs
- Data redundancy – Azure Storage | Microsoft Docs
I hope the above diagram helps in understanding the storage redundancy options available in Azure.
Any questions or feedback, please post a comment below.
See you at the next post.
