Questions on Azure SQL database backups

Question

Hello,

Just checked and found South East Asia region support following redundancy options for Azure SQL databases :

• Locally-redundant backup storage (LRS)
• Zone-redundant backup storage (ZRS)
• Geo-redundant backup storage
  Also read redundancy option selected for a database dictates the PITR and LTR backup storage.

My questions are:

1. What is the default redundancy option for Azure SQL databases in regions such as East US as above mentioned options are not available during database creation?
2. How can you find out which redundancy option was selected for a Azure SQL database from Azure portal?
3. If Geo-redundant backup storage is selected for Azure SQL database, can you configure Geo replication to paired Azure region? If yes, are two copies of database maintained in paired region? ( Tested this - selected Geo while database creation and couldn't see anything under Geo-replication blade. It seems like PIRT and LTR backups would be copied in paired region. If I want whole database to be available in a region, I can configure Geo-replication for that database. Is this correct?
4. Can you request your database to be backed up by Azure before some user initiated operations are initiated ? If my Azure Db is of 100 GB and for some reason I need to modify huge amount of data - I just want to backup this database before that. I know I can just note down the timing and proceed with PITR if my operation needs to be rolled back. Appreciate your insightful response. Thank you.

Answer 1

@anil kumar

The first 2 questions are answered with combination of documents of Backup Storage Redundancy and Storage Redundancy. Additionally Yes Geo Replication should be used for availability of Databases in paired regions.

Azure doesnt take adhoc requests for back up and you should be cautious as it takes some time before full back up is taken for your DB and you start seeing your DB's in PITR. Also check other ways you can copy the DB.

Hope this helps.

Regards
Navtej S