Soft-Delete and Redundancy for Recovery Services Vault when protecting Onprem VMWare machines using Site Recovery

Hello @Anandha Chandrasekaran

Thank you for posting your query on Microsoft Q&A platform.

Yes, it is recommended to keep Soft Delete enabled.

• Soft delete is enabled by default on new Recovery Services vaults to protect data from accidental or malicious deletion
• It retains deleted items for a period (for example, 14 days by default), allowing recovery if needed

References:

• Create and configure a Recovery Services vault
• Enhanced soft delete for Azure Backup

Important for ASR: Soft delete does not affect replication or failover behavior. It is purely a protection mechanism for vault data and configuration.

2. Vault Redundancy (LRS vs ZRS vs GRS):

For VMware → Azure Site Recovery:

• The Recovery Services vault stores metadata and policies
• The actual replicated VM data is stored in Azure Storage (managed disks, storage accounts)

Reference:

• VMware to Azure Site Recovery architecture

This means: Vault storage redundancy does not determine how your VM replication data is protected.

Microsoft guidance for Recovery Services vault storage:

• GRS (Geo‑redundant storage) → default, higher durability across regions
• ZRS (Zone‑redundant storage) → protects against zone failures within a region
• LRS (Locally redundant storage) → lowest cost, single‑datacenter protection

Reference:

• Recovery Services vault storage redundancy guidance

For your scenario (VMware → Azure Site Recovery), here is the recommendation approach:

LRS (Locally Redundant Storage) is the most commonly used option for Azure Site Recovery deployments because it is cost‑effective and sufficient in most cases where additional geo‑redundancy is not required.

ZRS (Zone Redundant Storage) is a good choice for production environments when you want added resilience against Availability Zone failures within the same Azure region.

GRS (Geo Redundant Storage) is optional and should be considered only if you have specific compliance, regulatory, or backup requirements that mandate an additional copy of vault data in a secondary region.

• ASR failover is handled by replication configuration, not vault redundancy
• Even if you choose GRS, it does not enable failover to a secondary region on its own
• Cross‑region DR must be configured explicitly using ASR replication

In Azure Site Recovery, the Recovery Services vault is a management layer. Replication durability depends on Azure storage and ASR configuration not on vault redundancy settings.

Thanks,
Suchitra.