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Difficulty: HardData Redundancy and High Availability

An organization is designing a shared storage solution for a critical financial transaction processing application hosted on Azure Virtual Machines. The application requires a shared file system that can deliver consistent sub-millisecond latency for metadata and file operations. To meet high availability requirements, the storage must survive the failure of an entire availability zone within the primary region without any data loss and without manual intervention. Additionally, the solution must replicate data to a secondary region for disaster recovery purposes. Which storage configuration should you recommend?

  1. Premium Azure Files configured with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS), using Azure File Sync or an automated sync tool to replicate files to a secondary Premium file share.Answer
  2. B
    Standard Azure Files configured with Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (GZRS).
  3. C
    Premium Azure Files configured with Locally Redundant Storage (LRS), replicated using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to the secondary region.
  4. D
    Premium Azure Files configured with Read-Access Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage (RA-GZRS) to enable direct write operations to the secondary region.

Answer

Premium Azure Files configured with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS), using Azure File Sync or an automated sync tool to replicate files to a secondary Premium file share.
The correct configuration is to use Premium Azure Files with Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS) coupled with an external replication mechanism like Azure File Sync. Premium Azure Files is necessary to meet the sub-millisecond latency requirements. Because the Premium tier of Azure Files supports only LRS and ZRS replication natively, any disaster recovery strategy to a secondary region must be implemented using tools like Azure File Sync, AzCopy, or Azure Backup rather than native GRS/GZRS storage replication. ZRS ensures that the storage continues to operate seamlessly if a single availability zone fails in the primary region.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the performance requirements.
The requirement for consistent sub-millisecond latency for shared file operations necessitates the Premium performance tier of Azure Files, which is backed by SSD storage.
Standard Azure Files is backed by HDDs and cannot satisfy the low latency requirements.
2
Evaluate high availability and zone redundancy requirements in the primary region.
To survive the failure of an entire availability zone without manual intervention or data loss, the storage must use Zone-Redundant Storage (ZRS). Locally Redundant Storage (LRS) is insufficient.
ZRS replicates data synchronously across three availability zones in the primary region, providing zone-level fault tolerance.
3
Assess replication limits for Premium Azure Files.
Premium Azure Files only supports LRS and ZRS. It does not support native geo-redundancy options like GRS, GZRS, or RA-GZRS.
To achieve regional disaster recovery, a multi-region replication strategy must be built on top of ZRS using helper tools such as Azure File Sync, AzCopy, or Azure Backup.

Key Concept

Azure Files redundancy capabilities and performance tier limitations
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Topics

Data Redundancy and High Availability

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