Just announced is the Microsoft Azure File System
(https://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/blog/azure-file-storage-now-generally-available/)
which allows users to present Azure storage over the SMB protocol, much like
what has been used in the enterprise for many years.
Full details can be found in the link above.
Data is stored in the following structure on
Azure. Account\Share\Directory\File.
The Azure File System is build upon the same
technology as the existing Azure storage architecture which includes blobs,
containers etc. Therefore Azure File System is backed by all of the same SLA's
and guarantees for durability, resiliency and availability as you would have
come to expect.
In this post I am going to outline the steps
required to create a Storage Account with File Share, and how to present that
share to an Azure instance. Firstly login to the Azure Preview Portal. The
Storage Account must be an ordinary Storage Account, and not one labelled
"Classic", depending on when your subscription was first set up will
determine if you even have access to Classic VM's and Storage.
If you do not have a Storage Account click the
Add button.
Enter a name for the Storage Account, this must
be globally unique. Configure the Resource Group and Regional settings to suit
your requirements and click Create.
Once the Storage Account has provisioned click on
it, and expand Services. You will notice there is now an option for
"Files", if your Storage Account is "classic" the option
for Files is not present. Click the Files tile.
Click the + File Share button.
Name the File Share, this only has to be unique
to your Storage Account. Also give the file share a quota if you want to. Click
Create.
Now click on the File Share, and you will be
faced with the following options. As per the Azure file structure, the next
step is to create a Directory inside of the File Share. Click the + Directory
button.
Once the directory is created, you then have the
ability to upload files into the directory.
Now that the Storage Account is configured with a
Share, Directory and sample file. You can now map a client device to the SMB
Share, at the time of writing the following versions of Windows with the
outlined version of the SMB protocol were supported. You can connect certain
versions of Linux/Unix to SMB Share, further details can be found in the
article above.
In order to authenticate the Azure instance you
are using to connect to your SMB Share, you must have the Storage Account
access key, you can expose these from the Preview Portal. Copy Key 1 to the
clipboard.
cmdkey /add:demotesting.file.core.windows.net
/user:demotesting.file.core.windows.net
/pass:y/Do/lCNNGkRiqivgtFlX+XXXXXXXXXXXXSbZ6VOuSkpexVGYCRaGa1x0xBaNtg12FzCQaKb/DhQ==
|
net use Z: \\demotesting.file.core.windows.net\smbshare
/u:demotesting y/Do/lCNNGkRiqivgtFlX+Wt9aJ2B2lkRjIXXXXXXXXXXkpexVGYCRaGa1x0xBaNtg12FzCQaKb/DhQ==
|
