What to Bring on Your First Date with Azure Storage as a Developer

In the project I have been developing for some time now, the main task is to process and store large amounts of data. We have been using Amazon S3 cloud storage for years for final archiving. And of course, our application structure is adapted to this. 

Some time ago, it was requested we switch our system to pour data into Azure Storage. And I was tasked with the job of figuring it out. 

Initial status: Do I have experience with Azure Storage? No. Have I ever worked on anything related to Azure Storage? No. Do I know anything at all about Azure Storage? No. Does anyone on our project team have experience with Azure Storage? No. 

Despite this, I took on the task with confidence and got ready to start googling. 

The first question that emerged clearly was: "How do I set up a development sandbox to play around in if I don't currently have an Azure account?" 

Knowing that I'd have to figure it out and probably get a dummy account, I shelved the idea for later and went to a non-project meeting to chat. To my surprise, I left the meeting with a clear and simple answer to my question, thanks to my colleagues.

Azurite - custom Azure Storage in five minutes.

I'm at that age where the youthful part of me hasn’t surrendered yet, but it’s definitely keeping the white flag ready – just in case. And so, in my lifetime, I have managed to make quite a few mistakes, errors and blunders, which to a greater or lesser extent have gradually increased my private pile called "experience". Well, it is exactly this pile where you will find my very skeptical attitude towards sentences like "You'll have that figured out in five minutes."

Well, surprise! It actually works! I managed to get Azurite up and running in... well... 10 minutes.

In those ten minutes, I got a fully functional - and for the sake of the application being connected, indistinguishable from the "original" - emulated instance of Azure Storage running on my local machine.

Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

Now how to get some initial data into it and how to browse it. The answer is Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer, a simple, intuitive application that not only gives you complete control over your data but also gives you the option of installing the Azurite emulator if you need it.

And so, thanks to my colleagues and these two utilities, I moved from the "Okay, I need to understand my assignment first" phase to the "I have my own Azure Storage and test data ready" phase in an extremely short time. Yay!

Here are the two key takeaways:

• If you need an Azure Storage sandbox for development, then use a combination of Azurite + Microsoft Azure Storage explorer.
  • https://learn.microsoft.com/cs-cz/azure/storage/common/storage-use-azurite
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/storage/storage-explorer
• If you are thrown in at the deep end, first check if any of your colleagues are already swimming there (or sinking hehe).