Reliability in Azure Image Builder (AIB)

This article contains cross-region disaster recovery and business continuity.

Azure Image Builder (AIB) is a regional service with a cluster that serves single regions. The AIB regional setup keeps data and resources within the regional boundary. AIB as a service doesn't do fail over for cluster and SQL database in region down scenarios.

Аварийное восстановление (DR) относится к процедурам, которые организации используют для восстановления после событий значительного воздействия, таких как стихийные бедствия или ошибочные развертывания, которые приводят к простою и потере данных. Regardless of the cause, the best remedy for a disaster is a well-defined and tested DR plan and an application design that actively supports DR. Прежде чем приступить к созданию плана аварийного восстановления, ознакомьтесь с рекомендациями по разработке стратегии аварийного восстановления.

For DR, Microsoft uses the shared responsibility model. В этой модели корпорация Майкрософт гарантирует, что доступны базовые инфраструктуры и службы платформы. Однако многие службы Azure не делают автоматической репликации данных и не обеспечивают возврат из вышедшего из строя региона для перекрестной репликации в другой доступный регион. For those services, you're responsible for setting up a disaster recovery plan that works for your workload. Большинство служб, работающих на платформе Azure как услуга (PaaS), предоставляют функции и рекомендации для поддержки аварийного восстановления. You can use service-specific features to support fast recovery to help develop your DR plan.

To ensure fast and easy recovery for Azure Image Builder (AIB), it's recommended that you run an image template in region pairs or multiple regions when designing your AIB solution. You should also replicate resources from the start when you're setting up your image templates.

When a regional disaster occurs, Microsoft is responsible for outage detection, notifications, and support for AIB. However, you're responsible for setting up disaster recovery for the control (service side) and data planes.

Microsoft sends a notification if there's an outage in the Azure Image Builder (AIB) Service. One common outage symptom is image templates getting 500 errors when attempting to run. You can review Azure Image Builder outage notifications and status updates through support request management.

You're responsible for setting up disaster recovery for your Azure Image Builder (AIB) environment, as there isn't a region failover at the AIB service side. You need to configure both the control plane (service side) and data plane.

It's recommended that you create an AIB resource in another nearby region, into which you can replicate your resources. For more information, see the supported regions and what resources are included in an AIB creation.

In the case of a diaster for single-region, you still need to get an image template resource from that region even when that region isn't available. You can either maintain a copy of an image template locally or can use Azure Resource Graph from the Azure portal to get an image template resource.

To get an image template resource using Resource Graph from the Azure portal:

1. Go to the search bar in Azure portal and search for resource graph explorer.

   

2. Use the search bar on the far left to search resource by type and name to see how the details give you properties of the image template. The See details option on the bottom right shows the image template's properties attribute and tags separately. Template name, location, ID, and tenant ID can be used to get the correct image template resource.

   

Microsoft and its customers operate under the shared responsibility model. In customer-enabled DR (customer-responsible services), you're responsible for addressing DR for any service you deploy and control. To ensure that recovery is proactive, you should always pre-deploy secondaries. Without pre-deployed secondaries, there's no guarantee of capacity at time of impact.

When planning where to replicate a template, consider:

• AIB region availability:
  • Choose AIB supported regions close to your users.
  • AIB continually expands into new regions.
• Azure paired regions:
  • For your geographic area, choose two regions paired together.
  • Recovery efforts for paired regions where prioritization is needed.

In regards to your data processing information, refer to the Azure Image Builder data residency details.

• Reliability in Azure
• Enable Azure VM disaster recovery between availability zones
• Azure Image Builder overview