Initiate a regional failover by using PowerShell or Azure CLI

Azure Cosmos DB is a globally distributed, multi-model database service provided by Microsoft Azure. It offers seamless and automatic scalability, high availability, and low latency for your mission-critical applications. In the event of a regional outage, initiating a failover to another region is crucial to maintain business continuity. In this article, we’ll explore how to initiate a regional failover for your Azure Cosmos DB account using PowerShell or Azure CLI.

Prerequisites

To begin, you’ll need to have the Azure PowerShell module or Azure CLI installed on your machine. You can install the Azure PowerShell module by running the following command in PowerShell:

Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser

If you prefer to use Azure CLI, you can install it by following the instructions provided in the Azure CLI documentation.

Step 1: Authenticate with Azure

Before you can manage your Azure resources, you need to authenticate with your Azure account. You can authenticate with Azure using the following command in PowerShell:

Connect-AzAccount

If you’re using Azure CLI, you can use the following command to sign in:

az login

Step 2: Select the Azure Cosmos DB Account

Next, you need to select the Azure Cosmos DB account for which you want to initiate a failover. You can retrieve the list of available Azure Cosmos DB accounts using the following command in PowerShell:

$cosmosDBAccounts = Get-AzCosmosDBAccount

If you’re using Azure CLI, you can use the following command to list the Azure Cosmos DB accounts:

az cosmosdb list

You can then select the desired Azure Cosmos DB account by specifying its resource group and name.

Step 3: Initiate the Failover

Once you have selected the Azure Cosmos DB account, you can initiate the failover to another region. To initiate a regional failover using PowerShell, use the following command:

Set-AzCosmosDBAccountFailover -ResourceGroupName -Name -Location

Replace <resource-group-name> with the name of the resource group containing the Azure Cosmos DB account, <cosmos-db-account-name> with the name of the Azure Cosmos DB account, and <target-region> with the target region to which you want to fail over.

If you’re using Azure CLI, you can initiate the failover using the following command:

az cosmosdb failover-priority-change --resource-group --name --failover-policies

Replace <resource-group-name> with the name of the resource group containing the Azure Cosmos DB account, <cosmos-db-account-name> with the name of the Azure Cosmos DB account, and <failover-policies-json> with a JSON array containing the failover policies specifying the target region.

Step 4: Verify the Failover

Once the failover is initiated, you can verify the failover status to ensure it completes successfully. You can use the following command in PowerShell to retrieve the failover status:

(Get-AzCosmosDBAccount -ResourceGroupName -Name ).FailoverPolicies

If you’re using Azure CLI, you can use the following command to check the failover status:

az cosmosdb show --resource-group --name --query 'failoverPolicies'

Replace <resource-group-name> with the name of the resource group containing the Azure Cosmos DB account, and <cosmos-db-account-name> with the name of the Azure Cosmos DB account.

That’s it! You have successfully initiated a regional failover for your Azure Cosmos DB account using PowerShell or Azure CLI. Implementing regional failover ensures high availability and business continuity in the event of a regional outage.