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Azure always stores multiple copies of your data to protect it in the face of both planned and unplanned events. These events include transient hardware failures, network or power outages, and natural disasters. Data redundancy ensures that your storage account meets the Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for Azure Online Services.
This article describes the process of changing replication settings for an existing storage account that hosts Azure file shares.
Applies to
| Management model | Billing model | Media tier | Redundancy | SMB | NFS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v2 | HDD (standard) | Local (LRS) |  |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v2 | HDD (standard) | Zone (ZRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v2 | HDD (standard) | Geo (GRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v2 | HDD (standard) | GeoZone (GZRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v1 | SSD (premium) | Local (LRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Provisioned v1 | SSD (premium) | Zone (ZRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Pay-as-you-go | HDD (standard) | Local (LRS) |  |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Pay-as-you-go | HDD (standard) | Zone (ZRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Pay-as-you-go | HDD (standard) | Geo (GRS) | |
|
| Microsoft.Storage | Pay-as-you-go | HDD (standard) | GeoZone (GZRS) | |
|
Options for changing the replication type
When deciding which redundancy configuration is best for your scenario, consider the tradeoffs between lower costs and higher availability. The factors that help determine which redundancy configuration you should choose include:
- How your data is replicated within the primary region. Data in the primary region can be replicated locally using locally redundant storage (LRS), or across Azure availability zones using zone-redundant storage (ZRS).
- Whether your data requires geo-redundancy. Geo-redundancy provides protection against regional disasters by replicating your data to a second region that is geographically distant to the primary region. Azure Files supports both geo-redundant storage (GRS) and geo-zone-redundant storage (GZRS).
Important
Azure Files doesn't support read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) or read-access geo-zone-redundant storage (RA-GZRS). If a storage account is configured to use RA-GRS or RA-GZRS, the file shares will be configured and billed as GRS or GZRS.
For a detailed overview of all of the redundancy options for Azure Files, see Azure Files redundancy.
You can change your storage account's redundancy configurations as needed, though some configurations are subject to limitations and downtime requirements. Reviewing these limitations and requirements before making any changes within your environment helps avoid conflicts with your own timeframe and uptime requirements.
There are two ways to change the replication settings:
- Add or remove geo-redundancy or read access to the secondary region.
- Perform a manual migration in scenarios where the first option isn't supported, or to ensure the change is completed within a specific timeframe.
Change the replication setting
Change the redundancy configuration using Azure portal, PowerShell, or Azure CLI
In most cases you can use the Azure portal, PowerShell, or the Azure CLI to change the geo-redundant or read access (RA) replication setting for a storage account.
Changing how your storage account is replicated in the Azure portal doesn't result in down time for your applications, including changes that require a conversion.
To change the redundancy option for your storage account in the Azure portal, follow these steps:
Navigate to your storage account in the Azure portal.
Under Data management select Redundancy.
Update the Redundancy setting.
Select Save.
Manual migration
A manual migration provides more flexibility and control than a conversion. You can use this option if you need your data moved by a certain date, or if conversion isn't supported for your scenario. Manual migration is also useful when moving a storage account to another region. For more detail, see Move an Azure Storage account to another region.
You must perform a manual migration if you want to migrate your storage account to a different region.
Important
A manual migration can result in application downtime.
With a manual migration, you copy the data from your existing storage account to a new storage account. To perform a manual migration, you can use one of the following options:
- Copy data by using an existing tool such as AzCopy, one of the Azure Storage client libraries, or a reliable non-Microsoft tool.
- If you're familiar with Hadoop or HDInsight, you can attach both the source storage account and destination storage account to your cluster. Then, parallelize the data copy process with a tool like DistCp.
For more detailed guidance on how to perform a manual migration, see Move an Azure Storage account to another region.
Limitations for changing replication types
Limitations apply to some replication change scenarios depending on:
Region
Make sure the region where your storage account is located supports all of the desired replication settings.
Feature conflicts
Some storage account features aren't compatible with other features or operations. For example, the ability to fail over to the secondary region is the key feature of geo-redundancy, but other features aren't compatible with failover. For more information about features and services not supported with failover, see Unsupported features and services. The conversion of an account to GRS or GZRS might be blocked if a conflicting feature is enabled, or it might be necessary to disable the feature later before initiating a failover.
Storage account type
When planning to change your replication settings, consider the following limitations related to the storage account type.
Some storage account types only support certain redundancy configurations, which affect whether they can be converted or migrated and, if so, how. For more information on Azure storage account types and the supported redundancy options, see the storage account overview.
The following table lists the redundancy options available for storage account types and whether conversion and manual migration are supported:
| Storage account type | Supports LRS | Supports ZRS | Supports conversion | Supports manual migration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SSD provisioned v1 | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| HDD pay-as-you-go | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Downtime requirements
If you choose to perform a manual migration, downtime is required but you have more control over the timing of the migration process.
Costs associated with changing how data is replicated
Azure Files offers several options for configuring replication. These options, ordered by least- to most-expensive, include:
- LRS
- ZRS
- GRS
- GZRS
The costs associated with changing how data is replicated in your storage account depend on which aspects of your redundancy configuration you change. A combination of data storage and egress bandwidth pricing determines the cost of making a change. For details on pricing, see Azure Files Pricing page.
Geo-redundancy incurs an egress bandwidth charge at the time of the change because your entire storage account is being replicated to the secondary region. All subsequent writes to the primary region also incur egress bandwidth charges to replicate the write to the secondary region.
If you remove geo-redundancy (change from GRS to LRS), there's no cost for making the change, but your replicated data is deleted from the secondary location.