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A company is migrating its file shares to Azure. The files are critical business documents and require a highly available solution that can be accessed from on-premises servers and Azure VMs. Data must be resilient to zone-level failures within the Azure region. Which Azure service and redundancy option should be chosen?
- AAzure Files with Locally-redundant storage (LRS)
- BAzure NetApp Files with Standard tier
- CAzure Blob Storage with Geo-redundant storage (GRS)
- DAzure Files with Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Azure Files with Zone-redundant storage (ZRS)
Azure Files with Zone-redundant storage (ZRS) provides a highly available file share that is replicated synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the primary region, protecting against zone-level failures while being accessible from both on-premises (via Azure File Sync or VPN) and Azure VMs.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. LRS for Azure Files only replicates data within a single data center, not across zones, and thus does not protect against zone-level failures.
- B. Azure NetApp Files is a high-performance file storage solution. While highly available, the standard tier doesn't explicitly guarantee zone-level resilience unless configured with specific cross-zone replication features, and Azure Files ZRS is a more direct and cost-effective solution for generic file shares requiring zone-level resilience.
- C. Azure Blob Storage is object storage, not a file share service, and GRS provides geo-redundancy but not zone-redundancy within the primary region for file shares.
Azure Files with ZRS
Azure Files provides managed file shares in the cloud, and when configured with Zone-redundant storage (ZRS), it ensures high availability and resilience against zone-level failures.
- Provides fully managed file shares (SMB/NFS).
- ZRS replicates data synchronously across three availability zones.
- Accessible from on-premises (via VPN/ExpressRoute) and Azure VMs.
Memory trick: Azure Files ZRS: Zone safe for your shared files.