Read-access geo-redundant storage

Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) follows the same replication mechanism of GRS, in addition, to read access on your replicated data in the other regions.

Drawback: If a disaster occurs, some data might be lost, because the data replicates to the other region asynchronously.

Advantages:

• It provides the highest durability and availability, even if a disaster occurs in a whole region
• If a disaster occurs, you still only have read access to the storage, but no write access until Microsoft initiates failover to the secondary region
• The region with the read access can be used for data retrieval by the nearest offices to it without the need to go to another region to access the data; as a result, the data latency will decrease