Creating blob storage is pretty straight-forward. In this tutorial we will first create blob storage manually using portal and then I will show you how to create it using infrastructure as a code – bicep.

Create storage account

1. First go to azure portal and search for storage account. Click on create.

2. You are presented with various options regarding storage account. Choose appropriate resource group, subscription and region. Also, for the sake of this tutorial I will only use standard performance and locally-redundant storage.

3. Moving to the advanced tab, keep the default values. We are basically allowing REST HTTPS access with shared key. You can also allow anonymous access or Microsoft Entra authenication, but for the sake of this tutorial I will not use those options. I am choosing Hot tier, but you should choose the tier based on your requirements.

4. Moving to networking tab, keep everything as is. This ensures that the storage account is accessible from public network.

5. In Data protection section, keep everything as is as well. This section manages accidental deletions or modifications.

6. In Encryption tab, again keep everything as is. Data will be encrypted by using microsoft-managed keys.

7. As last step head to Review+Create and finish the process. Deployment may take a few minutes, so please be patient.

Create container and upload file(blob)

1. Now that the storage account is created, head to it in azure portal. Go to Data Storage in left menu and click on containers. You are presented with all currently available containers. Because the storage account was created just now, there is only one container named $logs, which contains logs related to this storage account. Choose the name for your container and create it.

2. You can now head to the created container and click on “Upload” in order to upload files to it.

Create azure blob storage using bicep(IAAC)

As on-premise companies increasingly move to cloud, infrastructure as a code is becoming more and more popular. Using for example bicep or terraform is a must, especially when it comes to bigger companies. Simply clicking the resources in portal is not sufficient enough. These are some of the advantages of using IAAC:

• Repeatable Deployments: IaC ensures that every deployment is identical, reducing the risk of human error and configuration drift.
• Speed: Automating the provisioning and management of infrastructure saves time and reduces the need for manual intervention.
• Scalability: IaC can easily scale resources up or down based on demand, facilitating auto-scaling and high availability.
• Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD): IaC integrates well with CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated testing, provisioning, and deployment of infrastructure.

In this tutorial, I will use bicep because I have the most experiences with it, but feel free to experiment with other tools as well(terraform, jenkins, etc.).

If you want to replicate the commands and code which I use, make sure you have installed the following prerequisities:

• Visual studio code – https://code.visualstudio.com/download
• Az command line tool – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli-windows?tabs=azure-cli
• Bicep extension in vscode

Create the file named main.bicep and insert the following code:

param location string = resourceGroup().location

resource storageAccount 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2022-09-01' = {
  name: 'sajakubtutorialbicep'
  location: location
  sku: {
    name: 'Standard_LRS'
  }
  kind: 'StorageV2'
}

resource blobService 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/blobServices@2023-01-01' = {
  name: 'default'
  parent: storageAccount
}

resource blobContainer 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts/blobServices/containers@2023-01-01' = {
  name: 'jakubcontbiceptutorial'
  parent: blobService
}

In this bicep code I basically create 3 resources:

• Storage account: I named it ‘sajakubtutorialbicep’ with default ‘sku’ and kind set to ‘StorageV2’ which is general-purposed storage account.
• Blob service: You can think of this as a interface between storage account and container. This is something you do not see when creating resource in portal, but you have to create it when using bicep. I used the ”default’ name. I also set it’s ‘parent’ attribute to storage account resource.
• Container: I named it ‘jakubcontbiceptutorial’ and set it’s ‘parent’ attribute to blob service resource created above. This way I linked the container to the storage account.

Now before I apply the changes I always like to run the ‘what-if’ command before. This command will show you which resources are going to be created/modified/deleted. It is good practice to run it before deploying resources, so you do not accidentally mess with existing resources. Do not forget to change the resource group name:

az deployment group what-if --resource-group rg-blobstorage-tutorial --template-file .\main.bicep

Output:

• Based on the output you can see that 3 resources will be added to my resource group, which is expected behaviour.

Now that I checked that everything in my resource group will be created as expected I run the following command, so that the changes shown in previous command actually get applied:

az deployment group create --resource-group rg-blobstorage-tutorial --template-file .\main.bicep

If everything runs as expected, the command will return deployment info in form of json. You can look through the properties of it, but generally speaking if the command did not return an error then everything shall be created and you should see your resources in portal.

Conclusion

In this tutorial I walked you through storage account topic, explained to you what it is, it’s different variations and how to create one.

Storage accounts are great way to store your data if you are using Azure. It allows you to create and manage data, manage access to it and use various options to increase your availability.

I encourage you to using bicep as much as possible. It is preferable way to manage your resources and will come very handy when your infrastructure in Azure will grow.