Question 1

What's the difference between Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS) and Geo-Redundant Storage (GRS)?

Accepted Answer

Both GRS and RA-GRS replicate your data asynchronously to a secondary Azure region for disaster recovery. The key difference is access: with GRS, the secondary copy isn’t available for reading unless Microsoft initiates a failover. With RA-GRS, Azure also provides a read-only endpoint in the secondary region, so your application can read from the secondary even when the primary region is having issues.

Question 2

When should I use Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS)?

Accepted Answer

Use RA-GRS when you need higher read availability across regions and can tolerate that the secondary data may be slightly behind the primary (because replication is asynchronous). It’s a good fit for read-heavy workloads like static website assets, product catalogs, reference data, and reporting datasets where continued read access during a regional outage is valuable. If you need strong consistency for reads immediately after writes, RA-GRS may not meet that requirement during failover to the secondary endpoint.

Question 3

How much does Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage (RA-GRS) cost?

Accepted Answer

RA-GRS typically costs more than LRS/ZRS/GRS because it stores additional copies in a secondary region and enables secondary read access. Your total cost depends on factors like stored capacity, write and read operations, data retrieval patterns, and outbound data transfer (egress). Reading from the secondary endpoint can also incur transaction costs, and any data you transfer out of Azure is billed as bandwidth/egress. For exact prices, use the Azure Storage pricing page and select the redundancy option (RA-GRS or RA-GZRS) for your region and storage type.

Read-Access Geo-Redundant Storage

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