A public-records portal must keep serving read requests from a second region while the primary region is down, without first performing a failover. Which replication option meets this?
Show answer and explanation
Answer: A
RA-GRS replicates data asynchronously to a paired region and exposes a read endpoint on the secondary, so reads can continue during a primary outage without a failover. Plain GRS keeps a secondary copy, but it is unreadable until a failover is performed. ZRS protects against a facility failure within one region only, and LRS keeps all copies in a single facility. Secondary reads may lag slightly behind primary writes.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. ZRS spreads copies across availability zones in one region. A full regional outage takes the data offline, so it provides no second-region read path.
- C. GRS copies data to a paired region, but the secondary is not readable until a failover is performed, so reads stop during the outage.
- D. LRS keeps all copies in one facility. It offers no secondary region, so a regional event removes every copy.
Exam tip. Choose RA-GRS or RA-GZRS when reads must continue from the secondary region without a failover.