I have an XML file that I'm saving on my local machine (Windows 8).
I want to allow the application to push that XML up to Azure. Then I would also need the ability to recall it as a sync process.
I'm not sure what services I need and if Azure would even provide it.
Any tips would be appreciated.
I suggest you to use the Azure Storage Blob. Push the XML file as BLOB in your Azure Storage Blob, you will get/have a URL to access that.
Related
Recently I have been working on adding documents to Azure storage using blob and file share. But then I realized that in file share using rest API I can upload in two steps
Creating a file
Adding content
I am able to doing that but my requirement here is to upload the .pdf, .docx document at once
and then there should be a way to download them as well.
Could some one please help.
Thanks
Unfortunately, there's no batch download capability available in Azure Blob Storage. You will need to download each blob individually. What you could do is download blobs in parallel to speed things up.
There is an alternative way you can approach using C# or PowerShell.
Would recommend you to please go through this MS document :
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-blob-scalable-app-download-files?tabs=dotnet
And this one also
https://azurelessons.com/upload-and-download-file-in-azure-blob-storage/
Reference: How to download multiple files in a single request from Azure Blob Storage using c#?
I have a problem that I have been wracking my brain about and figured I would need some perspective and insight from people who are a lot more knowledgeable about this.
What I have currently: Web based application hosted in azure uses azure blob store to store files that are generated as part of data import processes. We have a seperate application that extends the original web application that allows users to upload files and these files are currently also stored in azure blob store.
Where I am trying to go: I have a requirement that wants the ability to map network file shares on a users laptop and be able to access these files that currently reside in the blob.
Since Azure blob does not support SMB I have no way of actually doing this with a blob store.
I could use Azure files in conjunction with a File Server running the sync agent. However, this requires a lot of work both in terms of refactoring, setup and some custom service that add remove permissions on the file server.
I'm wondering if there is a service or a piece of software that exists in the market currently that allows me to continue using blob and perhaps sync the blob files into a file server that can then allow users to access and open files using windows file explorer? I found one that looks like an open source project but only does a one way sync from the blob to the file share. Ideally I'd like to find a solution that does a two way sync like azure file sync does.
Any thoughts and ideas will be appreciated.
Since the max number of blob containers, file shares is unlimited. Per my understanding, you could leverage the following approaches:
Migrate the data from blob storage to azure file share instead of blob storage, then the subsequent file store is azure file storage.
Note: Currently you must specify storage account key when mounting file shares, details you could follow this feedback. I recommend that you'd better do not map network file shares on a users laptop.
You could still use the blob storage, and you could create each blob container for each user and generate each blob container SAS token for your users, then the users could leverage Azure Storage Explorer to manage their blob files or use AzCopy and other command tools to download the blob files into their laptop file system.
Note: For security consideration, you could combine a stored access policy with a SAS, in order to revoke the permissions, you just need to invalidate the related access policy instead of regenerating the account key. Details you could follow Controlling a SAS with a stored access policy and Shared Access Signatures, Part 2: Create and use a SAS with Blob storage.
I want to write the output of pipeline to an FTP folder. ADF seems to support on-premises file but not FTP folder.
How can I write the output in text format to an FTP folder?
Unfortunately FTP Servers are not a supported data store for ADF as of right now. Therefore there is no OOTB way to interact with an FTP Server for either reading or writing.
However, you can use a custom activity to make it possible, but it will require some custom development to make this happen. A fellow Cloud Solution Architect within MS put together a blog post that talks about how he did it for one of his customers. Please take a look at the following:
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/cloud_solution_architect/2016/07/02/creating-ftp-data-movement-activity-for-azure-data-factory-pipeline/
I hope that this helps.
Upon thinking about it you might be able to achieve what you want in a mildly convoluted way by writing the output to a Azure Blob storage account and then either
1) manually: downloading and pushing the file to the "FTP" site from the Blob storage account or
2) automatically: using Azure CLI to pull the file locally and then push it to the "FTP" site with a batch or shell script as appropriate
As a lighter weight approach to custom activities (certainly the better option for heavy work).
You may wish to consider using azure functions to write to ftp (note there is a time out when using a consumption plan - not in other plans, so it will depend on how big the files are).
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-create-storage-blob-triggered-function
You could instruct data factory to write to a intermediary blob storage.
And use blob storage triggers in azure functions to upload them as soon as they appear in blob storage.
Or alternatively, write to blob storage. And then use a timer in logic apps to upload from blob storage to ftp. Logic Apps hide a tremendous amount of power behind there friendly exterior.
You can write a Logic app that will pick your file up from Azure storage and send it to an FTP site. Then call the Logic App using a Data Factory Web Activity.
Make sure you do some error handling in your Logic app to return 400 if the ftp fails.
I am in the middle of developing a cloud server and I need to store HDF files ( http://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/ ) using blob storage.
Functions related to creating, reading writing and modifying data elements within the file come from HDF APIs.
I need to get the file path to create the file or read or write it.
Can anyone please tell me how to create a custom file on Azure Blob ?
I need to be able to use the API like shown below, but passing the Azure storage path to the file.
http://davis.lbl.gov/Manuals/HDF5-1.4.3/Tutor/examples/C/h5_crtfile.c
These files i am trying to create can get really huge ~10-20GB, So downloading them locally and modifying them is not an option for me.
Thanks
Shashi
One possible approach, admittedly fraught with challenges, would be to create the file in a temporary location using the code you included, and then use the Azure API to upload the file to Azure as a file input stream. I am in the process of researching how size restrictions are handled in Azure storage, so I can't say whether an entire 10-20GB file could be moved in a single upload operation, but since the Azure API reads from an input stream, you should be able to create a combination of operations that would result in the information you need residing in Azure storage.
Can anyone please tell me how to create a custom file on Azure Blob ?
I need to be able to use the API like shown below, but passing the
Azure storage path to the file.
http://davis.lbl.gov/Manuals/HDF5-1.4.3/Tutor/examples/C/h5_crtfile.c
Windows Azure Blob storage is a service for storing large amounts of unstructured data that can be accessed via HTTP or HTTPS. So from application point of view Azure Blob does not work as regular disk.
Microsoft provides quite good API (c#, Java) to work with the blob storage. They also provide Blob Service REST API to access blobs from any other language (where specific blob storage API is not provided like C++).
A single block blob can be up to 200GB so it should easily store files of ~10-20GB size.
I am afraid that the provided example will not work with Windows Azure Blob. However, I do not know HDF file storage; maybe they provide some Azure Blob storage support.
I have an application that is deployed on Windows Azure, in the application there is a Report part, the reports works as shown below.
The application generates the report as a PDF file and save it in a certain folder in the application.
I have a PDF viewer in the application that takes the URL of the file and displays it.
As you know, in windows azure I will have several VMs that will handled through a Load balancer so I can not ensure that the request in step 2 will go to the same VM in step 1, and this will cause a problem for me.
Any help is very appreciated.
I know that I can use BLOB, but this is not the problem.
The problem is that after creating the file on a certain VM, I give the PDF viewer the url of the pdf viewer as "http://..../file.pdf". This will generate a new request that I cannot control, and I cannot know which VM will server, so even I saved the file in the BLOB it will not solve my problem.
as in any farm environment, you have to consider saving files in a storage that is common for all machines in the farm. In Windows Azure, such common storage is Windows Azure Blob Storage.
You have to make some changes to your application, so that it saves the files to a Blob stroage. If these are public files, then you just mark the Blob Container as public and provide the full URL to the file in blob to the PDF viewer.
If your PDF files are private, you have to mark your container as private. Second step is to generate a Shared Access Signature URL for the PDF and provide that URL to the PDF viewer.
Furthermore, while developing you can explore your Azure storage using any of the (freely and not so freely) available tools for Windows Azure Storage. Here are some:
Azure Storage Explorer
Azure Cloud Storage Studio
There are a lot of samples how to upload file to Azure Storage. Just search it with your favorite search engine. Check out these resources:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ee772820.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazurestorage/archive/2010/04/11/using-windows-azure-page-blobs-and-how-to-efficiently-upload-and-download-page-blobs.aspx
http://wely-lau.net/2012/01/10/uploading-file-securely-to-windows-azure-blob-storage-with-shared-access-signature-via-rest-api/
The Windows Azure Training Kit has great lab named "Exploring Windows Azure Storage"
Hope this helps!
UPDATE (following question update)
The problem is that after creating the file on a certain VM, I give
the PDF viewer the url of the pdf viewer as "http://..../file.pdf".
This will generate a new request that I cannot control, and I cannot
know which VM will server, so even I saved the file in the BLOB it
will not solve
Try changing a bit your logic, and follow my instructions. When your VM create the PDF, upload the file to a blob. Then give the full blob URL for your pdf file to the PDF viewer. Thus the request will not go to any VM, but just to the blob. And the full blob URL will be something like http://youraccount.blob.core.windows.net/public_files/file.pdf
Or I am missing something? What I understand, your process flow is as follows:
User makes a special request which would cause PDF file generation
File is generated on the server
full URL to the file is sent back to the client so that a client PDF viewer could render it
If this is the flow, that with suggested changes will look like the following:
User make a special request which would cause PDF file generation
File is generated on the server
File is uploaded to a BLOB storage
Full URL for the file in the BLOB is returned back to the client, so that it can be rendered on the client.
What is not clear? Or what is different in your process flow? I do exaclty the same for on-the-fly report generation and it works quite well. The only difference is that my app is Silverlight based and I force file download instead of inline-displaying.
An alternative approach is not to persist the file at all.
Rather, generate it in memory, set the content type of the response to "application/pdf" and return the binary content of the report. This is particularly easy if you're using ASP.NET MVC, but you can use a HttpHandler instead. It is a technique I regularly use in similar circumstances (though lately with Excel reports rather than PDF).
The usefulness of this approach does depend on how you're generating the PDF, how big it is and what the load is on your application.
But if the report is to be served just once, persisting it just so that another request can be made by the browser to retrieve it is just wasteful (and you have to provide the persistence mechanism).
If the same file is to be served multiple times and it is resource-intensive to create, it makes sense to persist it, then.
You want to save your PDF to a centralized persisted storage. VM's hard drive is neither. Azure Blob Storage is likely the simplest and best solution. It is dirt cheap to store and access. API for storing files and access them is very simple
There are two things you could consider.
Windows Azure Blob + Queue Storage
Blob Storage is a cost effective way of storing binary and sharing that information between instances. You would most likely use a worker role to create the Report which would store the report to Blob Storage and drop a completed message on the Queue.
Your web role instance could monitor the queue looking for reports that are ready to be displayed.
It would be similar to the concept used in the Windows Azure Guest Book app.
Windows Azure Caching Service
Similarly [and much more expensive] you could share the binary using the Caching Service. This gives a common layer between your VMs in which to store things, however you won't be able to provide a url to the PDF you'd have to download the binary and use either an HttpHandler or change the content-type of the request.
This would be much harder to implement, very expensive to run, and is not guaranteed to work in your scenario. I'd still suggest Blobs over any other means
Another option would be to implement a sticky session handler of your own. Take a look at:
http://dunnry.com/blog/2010/10/14/StickyHTTPSessionRoutingInWindowsAzure.aspx