Multi region Azure Storage data replication

Question

As you know, when using Azure DocumentDB, you can automatically replicate all of your data to any number of regions.

How can I achieve something like this in Azure Storage (specially Table Storage)?

I know that you can replicate copies of your data, either within the same data center, or to a second data center (Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)), but this is more like a disaster recovery solution.

I want my data to be available in multiple regions and replicated automatically between them (just like what DocumentDB offers).

Lets say I have a web application and using traffic manager it is distributed in 4-5 regions. I want my Azure Storage data to be available in all that regions and read data locally (in the same datacenter).

Is there an option to have global replication automatically? Or do I need to implements this myself?

Answer 1

Regarding the geo-redundant storage option: you can absolutely access the secondary location (just a different connection string). However, access would be read-only, and the data is eventually consistent - you cannot find out whether specific data has been replicated (there's no replication SLA).

If you want absolute ability to control replication, and to write in multiple regions, you'd need to replicate the data to storage in different regions, as the feature you're looking for doesn't exist for Azure Tables.