Question

Difficulty: MediumDesign Storage and Non-Relational Data HA and DR

ZenithFlow Logistics is designing a storage solution for a critical delivery tracking application that stores unstructured telemetry logs and delivery receipts in Azure Blob Storage. The solution must meet the following requirements:

- Under normal operations, data must be replicated across 33 availability zones within the primary region to protect against a single datacenter outage.
- In the event of a complete primary region outage, read access to the tracking logs must remain available immediately with a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 00.
- Write operations must be restored to a secondary region with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1515 minutes and an RTO of less than 11 hour.
- Cost and operational complexity must be minimized.

Which two actions should you include in the design to meet these requirements? (Select TWO.)

  1. Configure the storage account to use Read-Access Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (RA-GZRS).Answer
  2. Initiate a customer-managed failover of the storage account to the secondary region to restore write capabilities.Answer
  3. C
    Configure the application to perform write operations directly to the secondary endpoint of the storage account during the primary region outage.
  4. D
    Configure the storage account to use Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS).

Answer

Configure the storage account to use Read-Access Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (RA-GZRS), and initiate a customer-managed failover of the storage account to the secondary region to restore write capabilities.
To meet all constraints, the design must use Read-Access Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (RA-GZRS) and utilize customer-managed failover. RA-GZRS replicates data across three availability zones in the primary region, meeting the zone-redundancy requirement under normal operations. It also provides a read-only secondary endpoint, enabling immediate read access (RTO of 00) during a primary region outage. To restore write capabilities in the secondary region within the target RTO, a customer-managed failover must be initiated, converting the secondary region to the new primary region.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate the primary region redundancy requirements.
Since the data must be replicated across 33 availability zones in the primary region, a zone-redundant storage option is required. This eliminates RA-GRS, which only replicates locally (LRS) in the primary region, and leaves RA-GZRS as the correct replication option.
RA-GZRS combines the zone-redundancy of ZRS in the primary region with geo-replication to a secondary region.
2
Evaluate the read availability requirement during a primary region outage.
To achieve an RTO of 00 for reads, the application must be able to read from the secondary region immediately without waiting for a failover. This requires Read-Access enablement, which exposes the secondary read-only endpoint.
RA-GZRS provides a secondary endpoint that remains readable even when the primary region is completely offline.
3
Evaluate the write recovery requirement.
Since the secondary endpoint is read-only, write operations cannot be performed against the secondary region directly. A failover must be initiated to convert the secondary region into the new primary region, restoring write access.
Customer-managed failover is the standard, supported method to recover write capabilities for GRS/GZRS storage accounts during a regional outage.

Key Concept

Azure Storage replication redundancy options (RA-GZRS vs. RA-GRS) and the mechanics of customer-managed failover for disaster recovery.
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