Configuring Azure Object Replication

Steps for Configuring Object Replication

We will use the Azure portal for configuring object replication for a test storage account. Before proceeding forward, ensure that you can access two separate Azure storage accounts, and that blob versioning is enabled for them. Also, ensure change feed is enabled for the source account.

Step 1: Visit your Azure dashboard, and navigate to the source storage account. Then select the Object replication option under Data Management from the sidebar.

Step 2: Click on the Create replication rules button. 

Step 3: Select a destination storage account from the dropdown. It should be different from the source account.

Step 4: Select the source and destination containers. Depending on the replication rules, objects from the source container are copied to the destination container.

Step 5: Click on Change under the Copy-over column to choose which objects are copied based on the time they are added to the source container. 

Step 6: Click on Add under the Filters column to add prefix-based filtering for blobs and folders in the source container.

Step 7: When you are done with adding container pairs, click on Create.

Upon successful creation, you will see notifications similar to the following on the top right corner of your screen.

Now, we will see how to remove a replication policy.

Removing Object Replication Policy

Removing an object replication policy is a single-step process. Just navigate to the Object Replication tab for your source storage account, select the policy you want to remove, and click on the Delete Rules option.

Upon successful deletion, you will see notifications similar to the following.

The following section covers some important points related to object replication.

What is Object Replication?

Credit: learn.microsoft.com

Object replication in Azure is used for asynchronously copying all the information related to a blob from a source to a destination container based on your configuration.

The following are some use cases of Object Replication:-

• Minimized latency: Object replication helps you reduce latency for read requests by allowing clients to fetch data from a region closer to them
   
• Higher Efficiency: You can perform computation on large datasets by processing them in different regions
   
• Reduced Costs: After replicating your data, you can reduce your billing costs by archiving it to cold storage services

Frequently Asked Questions

What is blob versioning in Azure?

The blob versioning feature automatically maintains previous versions of your blob storage, allowing you to easily recover modified or deleted data. Azure creates a unique version ID for each write operation to your blob.

What are asynchronous transfers?

Asynchronous transfers are non-blocking transfer operations that allow other tasks to run in parallel. Azure Object replication uses asynchronous transfers to copy data, meaning that the changes to the source container are not instantly reflected in the destination container.

What is “change feed” in Azure Blob Storage?

The change feed feature provides ordered, durable, and read-only transaction logs of the changes to the blobs in your storage account. Each change generates precisely one change in the log.

Conclusion

This article discussed configuring Azure object replication using the Azure portal. We also looked at some important points related to it.

You can go through the following articles to learn more about Microsoft Azure:-

• Introduction to Microsoft Azure
   
• Azure Backup
   
• ALM in Azure

Happy Learning!