Azure, Cloud Computing

5 Mins Read

Setup, Connect, and Understand Working of Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

Microsoft Azure Storage account is an excellent service provided by Microsoft Azure to fulfill storage needs on the cloud for its customers. Azure Storage is accessible over the web browser in the Azure portal. However, would it not be great if you could have a way to access the services on your local machine too? Microsoft’s Azure Storage explorer is just the right tool to utilize cloud storage with the functionality and ease like Windows explorer.

Azure Storage Explorer is a client-based cross-platform tool that eases the management of multiple Azure storage services.

Today, we will learn how to connect to storage explorer with your Azure storage services and introduce you to a few capabilities that the storage explorer can offer us.

TABLE OF CONTENT
1. Installation and Setup
2. Connectivity
3. Functionalities and Working with Azure Storage Explorer
4. Benefits
5. Conclusion

Installation and setup:

  1. First, navigate to the Microsoft website and download the installation file respective to your operating system; here, we select windows.
    Azure Storage
  2. After the download is complete, run the downloaded .exe file and proceed with the installation steps like selecting the installation mode — accepting the license agreement — selecting the installation path.
    Azure Storage
    Azure Storage

Connectivity

In this section, we will look at various ways to connect with azure storage accounts using storage explorer.

  1. The first method is a direct connection to subscription. We select a specific environment such as azure in our case and select next. We will be redirected to a browser for authentication of our azure account. After authentication, we can connect to all the storage accounts associated with the Azure account.
    Azure Storage
    Azure Storage
    Azure storage
  2. The second method is to connect to the Azure storage account using access keys. There may be scenarios where we don’t want total access to the Azure account and only to storage accounts, in such situations, we can use connection string (keys or SAS) specific to the storage account to connect.
    Azure Storage
    Azure Storage
    Azure Storage
    In our example, we select the storage account. Next, we select the connection string as an option. On the next page, we enter the display name and connection string which is available in the Azure portal in our azure storage account. The Below image mentions how to obtain a connection string.
    Azure Storage
  3. Another method to connect is using account name (storage account name) and key (access key). We can also use the option of Shared access signature URL where we can provide access restrictions to storage accounts and components based on time and date.
    Azure Storage
    Azure StorageWe can get the storage account name and key from the Azure portal.
    Azure Storage
    We can obtain SAS tokens from the Azure portal as given below.
    Azure Storage

Functionalities and working with Azure Storage Explorer

In this section, we will see different approaches to work on azure blob containers and file shares using Azure storage explorer

Benefits

Conclusion

Today’s blog has seen multiple ways to connect Azure Storage Accounts to Azure Storage Explorer. In addition, we have also seen the capabilities of storage explorer for Azure Blob containers and File shares. Thus, we see that the Azure Storage explorer provides us with an easy and flexible environment to work with our storage accounts without any additional cost.

If you are interested to learn more about Azure Storage and Databricks, here is a Step-by-Step Guide to Connect Azure Databricks to an Azure Storage Account.

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