Azure Site Recovery Now Handles 5x the Data Churn

Support 5x churn in Azure Site Recovery

Azure Site Recovery has officially launched with support for up to 5x churn, empowering customers to confidently run high IOPS workloads with robust disaster recovery capabilities. The new High Churn feature expands the supported data change rate from 100 MB/s per VM up to 500 MB/s per VM, enabling protection of even the most demanding applications like databases.

According to the official announcement from Microsoft, this enhancement ensures that Azure virtual machines running high-churning workloads can achieve better Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for mission-critical applications. The feature is now generally available for customers looking to modernize their disaster recovery strategies. Read more about the availability on the official Microsoft Azure Updates page.

What This Means for Your Business

The 5x churn increase is significant because it represents a quantum leap in disaster recovery capabilities for high-performance workloads. Previously, high-churning applications like transaction databases were limited to 100 MB/s per VM, leaving many enterprise-scale workloads underprotected. With the new 500 MB/s capability, businesses can now confidently protect demanding applications that generate substantial data change rates.

The impact goes beyond just raw throughput numbers. For organizations running production databases, financial systems, or other mission-critical applications with high IOPS requirements, this means they can maintain their existing architecture while gaining enterprise-grade disaster recovery. No longer do teams need to choose between performance and protection, Azure Site Recovery now supports both simultaneously.

The feature is particularly valuable for modern, data-intensive applications where Recovery Point Objectives are critical. By supporting higher churn rates, Azure Site Recovery helps businesses achieve consistent RPOs without compromising on application performance. This capability ensures business continuity for even the most demanding workloads in Azure environments.

Actionable Guidance: Enabling High Churn for Your Workloads

Setting up High Churn support involves several key steps to ensure optimal performance and cost efficiency. Here is how to get started with this enhanced disaster recovery capability:

  1. Verify VM Requirements – To achieve the full 500 MB/s churn limit, your Azure virtual machines need specific configurations. Minimum 256 GB RAM is required for the enhanced 500 MB/s limit, while 32 GB RAM can support the baseline 100 MB/s limit. For higher throughput, ensure your VMs have 256 GB or more RAM and meet the regional availability requirements for enhanced churn support.
  2. Check Operating System Compatibility – Windows VMs receive full support up to 500 MB/s, while Linux offers varying capabilities. Enhanced 500 MB/s support on Linux is currently available for RHEL 9, SLES 15, and Ubuntu 24.04. Other Linux distributions are limited to 100 MB/s under High Churn configuration. Read the official documentation for comprehensive OS compatibility details.
  3. Ensure Premium Storage Configuration – Source disks must be Premium SSD v1, Premium SSD v2, or Ultra Disk to support the High Churn feature. Standard storage accounts will only support Normal Churn with a maximum of 54 MB/s per VM. Upgrade your storage configuration if needed before enabling High Churn replication.
  4. Meet Regional Availability Requirements – Enhanced 500 MB/s support is available across many Microsoft regions, but both source and target regions must be from the approved list of regions supporting High Churn. This includes key regions like East US, West US, Europe West, Southeast Asia, and others. Verify that both your primary and secondary regions are on the support matrix.
  5. Configure Cache Storage Account – High Churn requires Premium Block Blob storage accounts for cache storage. During replication setup, access Recovery Service Vault, navigate to Replication Settings, and select High Churn option. This will restrict the cache storage dropdown to only Premium Block Blob options. Ensure you have appropriate Premium Block Blob storage accounts available for this purpose.
  6. Upgrade Mobility Service – The High Churn feature requires Azure Site Recovery Mobility service version 9.66.7640.1 or later. For newly protected VMs, this version is automatically applied. For already-protected VMs, upgrade the Mobility Service, reboot the VM when prompted, and ensure the compatible Azure Site Recovery kernel driver is loaded to activate the 500 MB/s limit.
  7. Consider Cost Implications – High Churn uses Premium Block Blob storage accounts, which have higher costs than Standard storage accounts used by Normal Churn. While the performance benefits justify many use cases, evaluate your specific workload requirements and budget constraints. Monitor network costs as High Churn increases data replication volume to the target compared to Normal Churn operations.
  8. Test Before Production Deployment – Start with non-production workloads or conduct proof-of-concept testing before full deployment. This allows you to validate that your specific application workloads meet all support matrix requirements and provide expected performance. Use the Azure Site Recovery Testing environment to simulate real-world conditions.

Key Technical Specifications

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