Access key creation

In order to initialize a Filespace with Microsoft Azure blob storage you will require a storage account and accompanying access keys.

1. Log into the Microsoft Azure portal and within your services select Storage Accounts.

2. Select Create to create a new Storage Account or select an existing and proceed to Step 9.

3. Create a new Storage Account

    a. Select your Subscription and create or choose an existing Resource group.

    b. Provide your unique Storage account name, select the closest Location for your workload and specify your Primary service as "Azure Blob Storage or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2" with your appropriate Replication and availability policy. 

Select Networking

Replication ensures that your storage account meets the Service-Level Agreement (SLA) for Storage even in the face of failures. See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/common/storage-redundancy for a detailed explanation of replication options. 

4. Your network choice dictates whether your Storage account is available publicly. In order to use LucidLink you need your Storage account accessible to your clients and our Filespace service through a public endpoint and your credentials. 

Select "Enable public access from all networks" and choose Data protection to continue. 

Alternatively specify 'Public endpoint (select networks)' and provide appropriate access to our Filespace service and clients as outlined in our Firewall port(s) and required software disclosure article.

5. Within Data protection, uncheck "Enable soft delete for blobs". Our Filespace performs garbage collection and maintains snapshots therefore Blob soft delete should remain disabled.

Secure transfer will ensure all traffic is HTTPS. Hierarchical namespace does not apply to LucidLink as our Filespace is providing the global namespace. 

6. Provide any preferred Tags in the Tags section or select Review + create to proceed.

7. Once your validation passes please review your Storage account settings and select Create.

8. Please allow a couple of minutes for your Storage account deployment to complete and then select Go to resource.

9. To locate your Access keys navigate to Security + networking from the left-side menu. Note your Key for your Storage account name. you will need it to create your Filespace. 

Note: you can regenerate your key at anytime and re-key your Filespace credentials. Please see rekey-azure KB article.

10. Once you have your Access key you can create your LucidLink Filespace. Please refer to the next section.

Filespace creation

Please login to our Web App or through the desktop application. Click on "Create Filespace":

Enter the name of your Filespace:

Select "Your own storage" and choose Azure:

Select the cloud storage region. You can enter the name of the container you have created. LucidLink automatically creates a container based on the Filespace name and a globally unique identifier if no container name is provided in the "Bucket name" field.

Enter the Account name and the Account key previously generated (see the Blob storage and access keys section)

Finally, once you have confirmed all the settings are correct, you can create your Filespace.

Please reach out to LucidLink Support should you encounter any challenges.