Microsoft has announced the general availability of Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) for Azure Disk Storage on Azure Premium SSDs and Standard SSDs in specific regions. These regions include China North 3, India Central, Switzerland North, South Africa North, and Sweden Central. ZRS offers synchronous data replication across three different availability zones within a single region. This feature enhances the resilience of disks, allowing them to withstand zonal failures without affecting the performance or availability of applications.
The introduction of ZRS eliminates the need for application-level data replication across zones, thereby simplifying the process of maximizing virtual machine availability. The feature is also compatible with shared disks, which means it can be used to increase the availability of clustered or distributed applications. Examples of such applications include SQL FCI, SAP ASCS/SCS, and GFS2.
For those interested in utilizing this feature, Microsoft has made documentation available for further reading.