AZ-104 Implement and Manage Storage Practice Question
A business-critical application uses an Azure storage account. The company requires that data remain available even if an entire Azure region becomes unavailable. Which redundancy option should you choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse GRS with GZRS, thinking GRS provides zone redundancy, but GRS only uses LRS in the primary region, making it vulnerable to zone-level failures within that region.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
GZRS
D (GZRS) is correct because it combines zone-redundant storage (ZRS) within a primary region with geo-redundant replication to a secondary region, ensuring data remains available even if an entire Azure region becomes unavailable. This meets the business-critical requirement for regional disaster recovery while maintaining high durability and availability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
LRS
Why it's wrong here
LRS (Locally Redundant Storage) makes three synchronous copies of data within a single physical datacenter in one region. Those copies share the same failure boundary, so a fire, flood, or large-scale hardware failure affecting that datacenter loses all data. It offers 11 nines of durability and no availability-zone or region-level resilience, making it unsuitable for a business-critical workload that needs continuous availability during a zone or region event.
When this WOULD be correct
A question that asks for the lowest-cost redundancy option while still protecting against local hardware failures within a single data center, with no requirement for regional or zonal disaster recovery.
- ✗
ZRS
Why it's wrong here
ZRS (Zone-Redundant Storage) copies data synchronously across three Azure availability zones in the same region, so it can survive an entire zone failure without data loss. However, all three copies remain in the primary region, and no data is replicated to a second geographic location. If the whole primary region becomes unavailable, ZRS cannot fail over to another region, meaning the application still goes down and data could be lost -- hence it does not meet the 'region resilience' half of the requirement.
When this WOULD be correct
When the requirement is to protect data within a single region against zone-level failures (e.g., datacenter failure), but the application can tolerate a regional outage or uses a separate disaster recovery mechanism.
- ✗
GRS
Why it's wrong here
GRS (Geo-Redundant Storage) locally replicates data in an LRS manner within the primary region and then asynchronously copies it to a paired secondary region. While this provides regional disaster-recovery by allowing a Microsoft-managed failover to the secondary region, the primary-region copy is still only LRS. Therefore, a failure of a single availability zone in the primary region can make the data inaccessible until the zone or datacenter recovers, so GRS lacks the zonal-resilience pillar that GZRS provides for a business-critical application.
When this WOULD be correct
If the question specified that the application requires geo-redundancy but does not need zone-level redundancy within the primary region, and cost is a concern, GRS would be the correct choice. For example: 'You need to replicate data to a secondary region for disaster recovery, but you do not require availability zone support in the primary region.'
- ✓
GZRS
Why this is correct
GZRS (Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage) is correct because it synchronously replicates your data across three Azure availability zones in the primary region, and then asynchronously replicates to a secondary region. This gives you both multi-zone protection against complete zone failures and geo-redundancy against a full regional outage. For a business-critical application that must tolerate both local area disruptions and a datacenter/region-level disaster, GZRS is the only storage redundancy option that satisfies both requirements simultaneously.
Option-by-option analysis
Why each answer is right or wrong
Understanding why wrong answers are wrong — and when they would be correct — is what separates a 750 score from a 900. The AZ-104 exam frequently reuses these exact scenarios with slightly different constraints.
✓GZRSCorrect answer▾
Why this is correct
GZRS (Geo-Zone-Redundant Storage) is correct because it synchronously replicates your data across three Azure availability zones in the primary region, and then asynchronously replicates to a secondary region. This gives you both multi-zone protection against complete zone failures and geo-redundancy against a full regional outage. For a business-critical application that must tolerate both local area disruptions and a datacenter/region-level disaster, GZRS is the only storage redundancy option that satisfies both requirements simultaneously.
✗LRSWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
LRS (Locally Redundant Storage) replicates data three times within a single data center in a single region, so it cannot survive an entire Azure region becoming unavailable.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
A question that asks for the lowest-cost redundancy option while still protecting against local hardware failures within a single data center, with no requirement for regional or zonal disaster recovery.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may choose LRS because it is the cheapest redundancy option and they might overlook the requirement for region-level availability, assuming 'redundancy' alone is sufficient.
✗ZRSWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
ZRS replicates data synchronously across three availability zones within a single region, so it does not protect against a full regional outage.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
When the requirement is to protect data within a single region against zone-level failures (e.g., datacenter failure), but the application can tolerate a regional outage or uses a separate disaster recovery mechanism.
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may confuse 'zone-redundant' with 'region-redundant' or assume that availability zones span multiple regions, leading them to believe ZRS provides regional failover.
✗GRSWrong answer — click to see why▾
Why this is wrong here
GRS provides region-level redundancy but only within a single secondary region, not across multiple regions. The question requires availability even if an entire Azure region becomes unavailable, which GZRS meets by replicating to a secondary region with zone redundancy.
★ When this WOULD be the correct answer
If the question specified that the application requires geo-redundancy but does not need zone-level redundancy within the primary region, and cost is a concern, GRS would be the correct choice. For example: 'You need to replicate data to a secondary region for disaster recovery, but you do not require availability zone support in the primary region.'
Why candidates choose this
Candidates may think GRS is sufficient because it replicates to a secondary region, overlooking that GRS lacks zone redundancy in the primary region, which GZRS provides. They might also confuse GRS with GZRS due to similar names.
Analysis generated from the official AZ-104blueprint and verified against question context. The “when correct” sections are what AI assistants cite when candidates ask “what’s the difference between these options?”
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Managed Identities for Azure Resources
Key term
Zone-redundant storage
Zone-redundant storage is a data replication method that stores copies of your data in multiple physical locations within a cloud region, so your data remains safe and available even if one entire data center fails.
Key term
Replication
Replication is the process of copying and synchronizing data across multiple servers or storage devices to ensure availability, reliability, and fault tolerance.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This AZ-104 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the AZ-104 exam.