If your account has not been granted access to your department’s storage (blob container), your supervisor will need to contact IT to request access for you. Note that access to Azure blob storage is restricted to the ACU network, so connect to the VPN first if you need access from off-campus.
Connecting to a blob container
- Make sure you have the blob container URL handy. You can get it from your supervisor or another member of your department who has already performed these steps, or from IT.
- Download, install*, and launch Azure Storage Explorer.
* - For macOS, you may simply need to drag the app to your Applications folder.
- Click Sign in with Azure in the Get Started section of the main panel. Leave Azure selected for the Azure Environment, and click Next, then sign in with your ACU single sign-on account. Click Open Explorer when it finishes.
- In the side bar of Azure Storage Explorer, expand Emulator & Attached if it is not already expanded. Right-click Storage Accounts, then choose Connect to Azure Storage.
- Choose Blob container, then choose Sign in using Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) and click Next.
- Select your SSO account. Click Next.
- Paste the blob container URL from step 1 into the Blob container URL field. The Display name field will auto-populate, but you can change it to something more descriptive if you prefer. Click Next, then Connect.
- If you get an error message saying “This request is not authorized to perform this operation using this permission,” it means that your account has not been granted access to this blob container. Your supervisor will need to contact IT to request access for you.
- Your container is now accessible. You can access it from the navigation panel on the left via Emulator & Attached --> Storage Accounts --> (Attached Containers) --> Blob Containers --> (display name you chose in the previous step). You may need to expand some or all of these.
Accessing your data
Once you have performed the steps above, you can use the Upload or Download buttons to transfer data between your local machine and the Azure storage container. Note that in order to download data that is in the archive tier, you will need to right-click it, choose Change Access Tier, and move it to the hot or cool tier. This will likely take hours or days. You can download it once the process completes. If it is in the hot or cool tier, you can download it immediately.
In order to conserve on costs, data is automatically moved to the archive tier after a period of inactivity. For files that have not previously been archived, this is typically one day after it was last accessed. For files that were archived and subsequently re-hydrated, there is a seven day pause before it can be automatically archived again, in order to avoid frequent shuffling between tiers, which is time-consuming and incurs transaction costs.