Storage Accounts are pretty much integrated into so many different designs in Azure, whether you are using Azure Synapse, 3^rd party product like Snowflake, or Event Streaming designs – we need it.

When you create a storage account there are 5 different replication types you should know about.  These are LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS and GZRS. Lots of abbreviations here, lets explain further.

1. LRS = Locally redundant storage. This is the most basic replication type. All your data is held in one place within the region. Data is replicated 3 times though; each replica sits on a different rack.
2. ZRS = Zone redundant storage.  The hint is within the name, this is zonal based so your account is built across separate datacentres within the region with totally separate power and connectivity.
3. GRS = Geo Redundant storage. This is LRS on steroids. The 3 copies from the concept of LRS is asynchronously replicated to paired datacentre which means 6 copies are held.
4. Ra – grs = Read access geo Redundant storage.   The is like the above with the difference of accessing the secondary read only.
5. GZRS – Geo Redundant Zone Redundant storage – Ok this is a mouthful but this is using ZRS BUT also replicated to the paired DC where at the paired DC its stored 3 times.