Getting started with using Blob Fuse

Overview

Blob Fuse lets you mount Blob storage onto a Linux filesystem.

SFTP Gateway does not include Blob Fuse as a feature, nor is it supported.

This article is provided for convenience, as some SFTP Gateway customers may happen to also benefit from knowing how to set up and use Blob Fuse.

Installation and set up

Blobfuse is an open source project available on GitHub.

You can follow the instructions in the README file. Or, you can follow the instructions specific to CentOS 7 provided below.

First, create a Blob Storage Account, and a container (in my example, I called it rob-blob-fuse-mount).

Next, run the following commands:

# elevate your permissions
sudo su

# Install blobfuse
rpm -Uvh https://packages.microsoft.com/config/rhel/7/packages-microsoft-prod.rpm
yum install blobfuse fuse -y
 
# Set some variables. Make sure you replace these values with your own Storage Account name and key
export AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT=<your-storage-account-name>
export AZURE_STORAGE_ACCESS_KEY=<your-storage-account-key>
 
# Create an empty folder that will serve as the mount
cd /home/robtest/home/robtest/
mkdir blob-fuse-mount/
chown robtest:robtest blob-fuse-mount/
 
# Create an empty tmp folder
mkdir /blob-fuse-tmp
 
# Mount the folder with blobfuse
blobfuse /home/robtest/home/robtest/blob-fuse-mount --container-name=rob-blob-fuse-mount --tmp-path=
 /blob-fuse-tmp

At this point, you should be able to drop a file into your container, and see it on the file system.

This is just a getting started tutorial. There's a lot more to blobfuse, so refer to the documentation on GitHub for more information.