Implement Azure Storage Blobs and Files

Implement Azure Storage Blobs and files
 

Azure blob storage is a storage type of the azure Storage account.  Go through my previous post about Azure Storage Accounts here.

Azure blob storage is the place to store unstructured data of many varieties. You can store images, video files, word documents, lab results, and any other binary file you can think of.In addition, Azure uses blob storage extensively. For instance, when you mount extra logical drives in an Azure virtual machine (VM), the drive image is actually stored in by the Blob service associated with an Azure blob storage account. In a blob storage account, you can have many containers. Containers are similar to folders in that you can use them to logically group your files. You can also set security on the entire container. Each blob storage account can store up to 500 terabytes of data.

All blobs can be accessed through a URL format. It looks like this:

http://<storage account name>.blob.core.windows.net/<container name>/<blob name>

Create Container

This section explains how to create a container and upload a file to blob storage for later reading.

1. Navigate to the Containers tab for your storage account in the management portal

Accessed via https://manage.windowsazure.com.

2. Click Add on the command bar. If you do not yet have a container, you can click Create a container.

3.  Give the container a name, and select Public Blob for the access rule, as shown in below 

4. You can choose between the following access permissions on the container:

           ■ Private All access to the container and its blobs require authentication.

           ■ Public Container All access to the container and its blobs are anonymous.

         ■ Public Blob You cannot list blobs in the container without authentication, but you can navigate to the blob URL, if you have it, and read it anonymously. This setting can be changed at any time through the management portal, by using Windows PowerShell, or by configuring it programmatically.

Find your Account access key

To ind your account access key using the management portal, complete the following steps:

1. Click the Dashboard tab for your storage account.

2. Click Manage Keys to in the Key1 and Key2 key for managing your account,

as shown below. Always use the key1 for management activities.

 Uploading Blob

To upload a blob using AzCopy, complete the following steps:

1. Download AZCopy from http://aka.ms/downloadazcopy. Run the .msi ile downloaded from this link.

2. Open a command prompt and navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\AzCopy.

3. Create a text file in a folder that is easy to get to. Insert some random text in it and saved in my local c:\test folder .

4. open cmd(command propmt ) , then enter below command.

AzCopy /Source:C:\test /Dest:https://<storageAccountname>.blob.core.windows.net/<containerName> /DestKey:key /Pattern:"contacts.txt"

5. click on enter in the command prompt , file will transer to container in the Azure portal.

6. you should be able to see your  in azure portal as shown in the below screen shot.

Reading data

You can anonymously read blob storage content directly using a browser if public access to blobs is enabled. The URL to your blob content takes this format:

https://<your account name>.blob.core.windows.net/<your container name>/<your path

and Filename>

https://<StorageAccount>.blob.core.windows.net/files/Contacts.txt