The data within the Azure storage account is always replicated to ensure that it is protected from planned and unplanned events, including transient hardware failures, network or power outages, and massive natural disasters.
There is four level of data replication:
- Locally redundant storage (LRS)
- Zone redundant storage (ZRS)
- Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
- Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
Locally redundant storage
This is where the data is replicated to a storage scale unit which is spread across fault domains and update domains within a single datacentre.
Zone redundant storage
The data is replicated to another availability zone (which is autonomous and includes separate utilities and networking features)
Geo-redundant storage
In geo-redundant storage replication, data is replicated to data to a secondary region that is hundreds of miles away from the primary region.
Read-access geo-redundant storage
This is similar to geo-redundant storage but has the extra functionality of the data being readable.
Implementing replication
When creating a storage account one of the above replication options must be selected. In the portal, this is done under the replication section
In Powershell -Skuname is used, the option are Standard_LRS, Standard_ZRS, Standard_GRS, Standard_RAGRS