We are happy to introduce a new backup storage redundancy option for Azure SQL Managed Instance that increases the ever-important protection and availability of customer backups.
The new Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) backup storage option combines the best of two worlds - Geo-Redundant and Zone-Redundant storage, keeping backups safe from both regional (Geo-Redundant) and Data Center (Zone-Redundant) failures. It provides the highest availability for storage currently offered on Azure, improving recovery speed and enabling Point-In-Time Restore (PITR) of backups in the event of a zone failure.
Geo-Zone Redundant Storage for Azure SQL Managed Instance backups provides 3 synchronous copies in different availability zones within the same primary region, plus an additional asynchronous copy within a single availability zone in the paired secondary region, as shown on the following picture:
Note that Geo-Zone Redundant Storage (GZRS) is designed to provide at least 99.99999999999999% (16 9's) durability of objects over a given year.
With the availability this backup storage option provides, customers who choose to use it can expect recovery and database restoration within the same primary region to be significantly faster given that, regardless of which availability zone contains the backup, the backup data is read locally, reducing additional network delay.
Additionally, GZRS provides Point-In-Time Restore (PITR) in the event an availability zone goes down, since you’ll be able to do a regular restore from a different availability zone. This is different to GRS, which relies on GeoRestore, limiting restore options to the last restorable point from your period region available for restore.
With availability of this backup storage option, customers who select it can expect that in the case of a recovery within the same primary region – the process should be significantly faster, given that no matter which availability zone will get it, the backup data will be read locally, instead of potentially adding additional network delay. The same logic applies for restoring a backup – it should consistently improve (or at very least provide the same performance for restoring a backup of a customer database when using any other currently available backup storage).
To select this new backup storage redundancy option, in the Azure portal when deploying your managed instance, choose to Configure Managed Instance under Compute + storage on the Basics tab. Under Backup storage redundancy, GZRS is the 4th newest backup storage redundancy option for customers to choose from, listed first as the following picture indicates:
As of today, GZRS is only available in a subset of Azure regions that have the current requirements:
- Have a geo-paired region
- Have multiple availability zones within both data centers (primary and secondary).
For more information about GZRS and other storage offerings, please review the respective article in our documentation - Data redundancy - Azure Storage.
If your workload needs the characteristics described above – with the highest availability & performance, you should consider using the new Geo-Zone Redundant backup storage (GZRS).
