Windows Azure – Configuring Storage Accounts

The volume of data in cloud based services grows exponentially, and so is the requirement for secure storage – be it unstructured data (blob) such as documents, photos, music, videos, backups,  Big data  or structured table data such as NoSQL or queue data. Windows Azure Storage configured along with other services can be of help here as it is highly scalable based on your requirements.

This post demonstrates how to setup a new Azure Storage Account under your Azure subscription account.

From the dashboard navigation, go to Browse and filter and select ‘Storage Accounts’

Specify the name of the account and select the resource group

Few moments of waiting….

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And the storage account is ready.

For demonstration, I will create a Blobs container first.

Select Services->Blobs

Specify the name of the container and access type (Private, Blob, Container). The description below helps you to choose one based on requirement.

The details shows the status and end point URL for primary and secondary storage with replication enabled.

The information below are essential for connectivity to your storage account. Copy and store the connection string or keys with you.

The essential information for connectivity (part of your connection string) are:

DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https; BlobEndpoint=<endpoint url>; AccountName=<storagename>; AccountKey=<account–key>

Note that instead of ‘BlobEndpoint’ specified above, you can use any of the below based on the end pint type

BlobEndpoint=<endpoint url>;
QueueEndpoint=<endpoint url>;
TableEndpoint=<endpoint url>;
FileEndpoint=<endpoint url>;