Mounting Azure File Share With Windows

Nithya Mathan
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This article shows the method of creating an Azure Storage account accessing the keys, and creating a file share, and mounting the file on Windows or our local machine.

In the old days, it was not possible for us to buy a disk for storing our data and keeping various records on our local computer. With the use of Azure File Share, we can use the file sharing that allows us to create a network and a drive that can be accessed via various platforms and methods. We can virtually be building a network drive, connect that drive to the local machine, and manage the disk through the network so that it becomes very easy to access and manage the disk data efficiently. The only lag in this is our network connection.

Prerequisites

An Azure Subscription.

The flow of this article is as follows.

Creating a Storage account.
Creating a File Share
Mounting a File Share on Windows.

Azure File Share

Azure Files offers fully managed file shares in the cloud, that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol (also known as Common Internet File System or CIFS). Azure File Shares can be mounted concurrently in the cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Follow the steps to create and mount the File Share on Windows,

Step 1

Step 2

On the Azure portal, press "+New" and click "Storage" followed by a click on "Storage Account".

Step 3

In the "Create storage account" blade, enter the required details and press "Create."

Step 4

After the successful creation of our storage account, open it and click the "File Share" option.

Step 5

Press "+File Share" on the on the "File service" blade.

Enter the name of your file and provide them Quota (Storage space in GB).The maximum quota for File Share is 5TB. Finally, press "OK."

Step 6

Our "File service" blade shows the file that we created in the "New File service" blade. You can use the method to create more records for future use. You may allow uploading, adding a directory etc. and various operations can be performed in our file system.

Press the end of your file like three dots, and it shows the list of settings >> click "Connect ". It opens various connecting methods to connect to our record.

The "Connect" blade pops up and shows various connection methods and strings to connect the file to the Windows. Copy the underlined string and paste it to the clipboard.

Step 7

Open the File Explorer and navigate to the "This PC". In the top ribbon, select "Map Network Drive" and choose the below option.

Select the drive letter and paste the underlined string (UNC path) copied from the "Connect" blade.

Open the storage account on the Azure portal and find Access Key Policies.

Copy the storage account name and the key from your account and paste it into the Windows Security window. Press OK to connect to your network drive.

Step 8

After the successful connection, our network drive is shown in the File Explorer.

You may see the properties of your network drive. Thus, the drive can be accessed from many places and we can store the data without having any real hardware.