I'm confused about Azure Recovery vaults and regions
In https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-vms-prepare it says "You can only select VMs in the same region as the vault."
It states "the Cross Region Restore option allows you to restore data in a secondary, Azure paired region"
That's for restoring, not backing up
Asking Gemini/Chatgpt and they both answer "No, an Azure VM does not have to be in the same region as Azure Recovery Vault to use it"
I'm obviously missing some documentation here, or misunderstanding it
The statement "You can only select VMs in the same region as the vault" in the document https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-azure-arm-vms-prepare is correct. However, the statement "No, an Azure VM does not have to be in the same region as Azure Recovery Vault to use it" provided by Gemini/Chatgpt is incorrect. Azure VMs must be in the same region as the Recovery Services vault to use it for backup and restore operations.
The Cross Region Restore option mentioned in https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/backup/backup-create-recovery-services-vault#set-cross-region-restore is used for restoring data in a secondary, Azure paired region. This feature is only available for Recovery Services vaults that use the GRS replication type.
To summarize, Azure VMs must be in the same region as the Recovery Services vault to use it for backup and restore operations. The Cross Region Restore (CRR) option is used for restoring data in a secondary, Azure paired region and is only available for Recovery Services vaults that use the GRS replication type. i.e.
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