Cloud Computing on Azure - Assignment 3: Working with Azure Blob Storage

Objective:

This assignement will guide you through Azure Storage service. You will manipulate Blob objects using the Azure portal, the CLI and the Python SDK.

Part 1: Managing Files in Blob Storage using Azure Portal

1. Task: Create a new Azure Blob Storage Account and configure it for storing unstructured data like files, images, and documents.

2. Instructions:

   • In the Azure portal, navigate to Storage Accounts and click Create.
   • Set the following:
     • Resource Group: Use the existing resource group (CloudBasics_RG).
     • Storage Account Name: Choose a unique name (e.g., myblobstorage01).
     • Region: Same as your other resources.
     • Performance: Choose Standard.
     • Replication: Choose Locally Redundant Storage (LRS).
   • Once the account is created, navigate to the Containers section in Blob Services and create a new container, use a unique name (e.g., 2024-10-10-container-1).
   • Once the container is created, create a file locally using touch file.txt in your terminal/using you laptop GUI, fill it with whatever you prefer and upload it to the blob storage via the portal.
3. Questions:
   • What's a Blob?
   • What's the access tier of the file you just uploaded?
   • What's the difference between all access tiers?

Part 2: Managing Files in Blob Storage using the CLI

1. Task: Upload files to Azure Blob Storage using the Azure portal and Azure CLI.

2. Instructions: All the following should be done using the CLI.

   • Create a new container in the storage account you created with the portal in Part 1. Name the container as you like (e.g. 2024-10-10-container-2).
   • List all the containers in your storage account in a table. How many containers do you see?
   • Download the file you uploaded to the storage in Part 1 in a file named downloaded_file.txt.
   • Next, upload downloaded_file to file.txt to the new container. What's the output of the command?
   • Now, upload all files of the archive you can find here to the new container withing a directory named archive. What's the output of the command?
   • Verify the upload by listing the contents of the container (2024-10-10-container-2).
   • Copy the previous container to a new one (2024-10-10-container-3) using the CLI. All objects inside the container should be copied.
   • Delete the container created in Part 1 (2024-10-10-container-1).
3. Documentation: az storage container and az storage blob.

Part 3: Managing Files in Blob using Python SDK

1. Task: Upload and download files to storage account using Python SDK.

2. Instructions:

   • Create a virtual environment using:

     python -m venv .venv

     Then activate your venv using:

     source .venv/bin/activate

   • Install the Azure Identity client library for Python:

     pip install azure-identity

   • Install the Azure Storage Blob client library for Python:

     pip install azure-storage-blob

   • Create a Python script to authenticate into your Azure account and connect to your blob storage account:

     from azure.identity import DefaultAzureCredential
     from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceClient
     
     # Acquire a credential object
     credential = DefaultAzureCredential()
     
     blob_service_client = BlobServiceClient(account_url="https://my_account_name.blob.core.windows.net", credential=credential)

   • Add to your script the ability to download a blob:

     download_file_path = "downloaded_from_blob.txt"
     with open(download_file_path, "wb") as download_file:
         download_file.write(blob_client.download_blob().readall())
     
     print(f"Blob {blob_name} downloaded to {download_file_path}")
     

   • Run the script to download the files you uploaded in Part 2 to container (2024-10-10-container-2).
   • Update your script to create a new container (2024-10-10-container-4) if it does not exist.
   • Update your script to upload files to a given blob container, then re-upload all the files of the archive to (2024-10-10-container-4)
   • Delete all containers you created in this assignement using Python (2024-10-10-container-2, 2024-10-10-container-3, 2024-10-10-container-4).
   • What's the difference between a SDK and a CLI?