Azure Blob storage has full support for SFTP. This means that you can easily connect to a Blob container using the SFTP protocol. Microsoft indicated that there was high demand for this feature without the need to deal with third-party solutions or container images.

A standard general-purpose v2 provides full support for SFTP.

Protect Your Data with BDRSuite

Cost-Effective Backup Solution for VMs, Servers, Endpoints, Cloud VMs & SaaS applications. Supports On-Premise, Remote, Hybrid and Cloud Backup, including Disaster Recovery, Ransomware Defense & more!

Configuration is simple

The configuration when creating a new storage account is simple:

Enable SFTP Support for Azure Blob Storage

When creating, there are two options you need to enable on the advanced tab.

Download Banner

If you want to add the functionality to an existing storage account, you must first perform a Data Lake Gen2 upgrade:

Enable SFTP Support for Azure Blob Storage

If you have rolled out a new storage account (or upgraded an existing one if necessary) then you can easily add an FTP user :

Enable SFTP Support for Azure Blob Storage

You can specify whether you want to access using a password or an SSH Key Pair (or both). This key can be stored in the Azure key vault, or an existing key can be used.

When adding a new SFTP user, you can specify which container this user should have with what specific rights. You can also quickly and immediately add a container :

Enable SFTP Support for Azure Blob Storage

Make sure you keep the password carefully. You cannot retrieve it later! (You do have the option to reset it)

How do I connect to this SFTP Container?

That’s very easy! Once the user is successfully added you can easily connect. The SFTP username is always used in the following format:

Storage_account_name.container_name.username so in my example I need to specify the following URL + username :

Enable SFTP Support for Azure Blob Storage

Costs

SFTP functionality on a storage account costs 30 cents per hour on top of storage and network costs. 30 Cents per hour may not seem like a lot at first, but realize that it is always on (365 days, 24 hours a day = >$2600) and can add upto quite a bit. For this reason, I advise you to turn it on only when you use it and then turn it off.

This can be done quickly with the following Azure CLI command :

$account = Set-AzStorageAccount -ResourceGroupName “MyResourceGroup” -AccountName “storagexoo” -EnableSftp $false

You could of course automate it using an automation account so that it is only active during certain hours.

Related articles:

Amazon S3 vs Azure Blob Storage – Comparison
Azure File Storage vs Azure Blob Storage
BDRSuite v5.3 New Feature Update: How to Store Backup Data on Azure Blob

Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for new releases, updates, insightful posts and more.

Rate this post