rclone/docs/content/azureblob.md

title	description	date
Microsoft Azure Blob Storage	Rclone docs for Microsoft Azure Blob Storage	2017-07-30

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

Paths are specified as remote:container (or remote: for the lsd command.) You may put subdirectories in too, eg remote:container/path/to/dir.

Here is an example of making a Microsoft Azure Blob Storage configuration. For a remote called remote. First run:

 rclone config

This will guide you through an interactive setup process:

No remotes found - make a new one
n) New remote
s) Set configuration password
q) Quit config
n/s/q> n
name> remote
Type of storage to configure.
Choose a number from below, or type in your own value
[snip]
XX / Microsoft Azure Blob Storage
   \ "azureblob"
[snip]
Storage> azureblob
Storage Account Name
account> account_name
Storage Account Key
key> base64encodedkey==
Endpoint for the service - leave blank normally.
endpoint> 
Remote config
--------------------
[remote]
account = account_name
key = base64encodedkey==
endpoint = 
--------------------
y) Yes this is OK
e) Edit this remote
d) Delete this remote
y/e/d> y

See all containers

rclone lsd remote:

Make a new container

rclone mkdir remote:container

List the contents of a container

rclone ls remote:container

Sync /home/local/directory to the remote container, deleting any excess files in the container.

rclone sync /home/local/directory remote:container

--fast-list

This remote supports --fast-list which allows you to use fewer transactions in exchange for more memory. See the rclone docs for more details.

Modified time

The modified time is stored as metadata on the object with the mtime key. It is stored using RFC3339 Format time with nanosecond precision. The metadata is supplied during directory listings so there is no overhead to using it.

Restricted filename characters

In addition to the default restricted characters set the following characters are also replaced:

Character	Value	Replacement
/	0x2F	／
\	0x5C	＼

File names can also not end with the following characters. These only get replaced if they are last character in the name:

Character	Value	Replacement
.	0x2E	．

Invalid UTF-8 bytes will also be replaced, as they can't be used in JSON strings.

Hashes

MD5 hashes are stored with blobs. However blobs that were uploaded in chunks only have an MD5 if the source remote was capable of MD5 hashes, eg the local disk.

Authenticating with Azure Blob Storage

Rclone has 3 ways of authenticating with Azure Blob Storage:

Account and Key

This is the most straight forward and least flexible way. Just fill in the account and key lines and leave the rest blank.

SAS URL

This can be an account level SAS URL or container level SAS URL.

To use it leave account, key blank and fill in sas_url.

An account level SAS URL or container level SAS URL can be obtained from the Azure portal or the Azure Storage Explorer. To get a container level SAS URL right click on a container in the Azure Blob explorer in the Azure portal.

If you use a container level SAS URL, rclone operations are permitted only on a particular container, eg

rclone ls azureblob:container

You can also list the single container from the root. This will only show the container specified by the SAS URL.

$ rclone lsd azureblob:
container/

Note that you can't see or access any other containers - this will fail

rclone ls azureblob:othercontainer

Container level SAS URLs are useful for temporarily allowing third parties access to a single container or putting credentials into an untrusted environment such as a CI build server.

Multipart uploads

Rclone supports multipart uploads with Azure Blob storage. Files bigger than 256MB will be uploaded using chunked upload by default.

The files will be uploaded in parallel in 4MB chunks (by default). Note that these chunks are buffered in memory and there may be up to --transfers of them being uploaded at once.

Files can't be split into more than 50,000 chunks so by default, so the largest file that can be uploaded with 4MB chunk size is 195GB. Above this rclone will double the chunk size until it creates less than 50,000 chunks. By default this will mean a maximum file size of 3.2TB can be uploaded. This can be raised to 5TB using --azureblob-chunk-size 100M.

Note that rclone doesn't commit the block list until the end of the upload which means that there is a limit of 9.5TB of multipart uploads in progress as Azure won't allow more than that amount of uncommitted blocks.

Standard Options

Here are the standard options specific to azureblob (Microsoft Azure Blob Storage).

--azureblob-account

Storage Account Name (leave blank to use SAS URL or Emulator)

• Config: account
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_ACCOUNT
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--azureblob-key

Storage Account Key (leave blank to use SAS URL or Emulator)

• Config: key
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_KEY
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--azureblob-sas-url

SAS URL for container level access only (leave blank if using account/key or Emulator)

• Config: sas_url
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_SAS_URL
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--azureblob-use-emulator

Uses local storage emulator if provided as 'true' (leave blank if using real azure storage endpoint)

• Config: use_emulator
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_USE_EMULATOR
• Type: bool
• Default: false

Advanced Options

Here are the advanced options specific to azureblob (Microsoft Azure Blob Storage).

--azureblob-endpoint

Endpoint for the service Leave blank normally.

• Config: endpoint
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_ENDPOINT
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--azureblob-upload-cutoff

Cutoff for switching to chunked upload (<= 256MB).

• Config: upload_cutoff
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_UPLOAD_CUTOFF
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 256M

--azureblob-chunk-size

Upload chunk size (<= 100MB).

Note that this is stored in memory and there may be up to "--transfers" chunks stored at once in memory.

• Config: chunk_size
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_CHUNK_SIZE
• Type: SizeSuffix
• Default: 4M

--azureblob-list-chunk

Size of blob list.

This sets the number of blobs requested in each listing chunk. Default is the maximum, 5000. "List blobs" requests are permitted 2 minutes per megabyte to complete. If an operation is taking longer than 2 minutes per megabyte on average, it will time out ( source ). This can be used to limit the number of blobs items to return, to avoid the time out.

• Config: list_chunk
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_LIST_CHUNK
• Type: int
• Default: 5000

--azureblob-access-tier

Access tier of blob: hot, cool or archive.

Archived blobs can be restored by setting access tier to hot or cool. Leave blank if you intend to use default access tier, which is set at account level

If there is no "access tier" specified, rclone doesn't apply any tier. rclone performs "Set Tier" operation on blobs while uploading, if objects are not modified, specifying "access tier" to new one will have no effect. If blobs are in "archive tier" at remote, trying to perform data transfer operations from remote will not be allowed. User should first restore by tiering blob to "Hot" or "Cool".

• Config: access_tier
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_ACCESS_TIER
• Type: string
• Default: ""

--azureblob-encoding

This sets the encoding for the backend.

See: the encoding section in the overview for more info.

• Config: encoding
• Env Var: RCLONE_AZUREBLOB_ENCODING
• Type: MultiEncoder
• Default: Slash,BackSlash,Del,Ctl,RightPeriod,InvalidUtf8

Limitations

MD5 sums are only uploaded with chunked files if the source has an MD5 sum. This will always be the case for a local to azure copy.

Azure Storage Emulator Support

You can test rclone with storage emulator locally, to do this make sure azure storage emulator installed locally and set up a new remote with rclone config follow instructions described in introduction, set use_emulator config as true, you do not need to provide default account name or key if using emulator.