In order to initialize a Filespace with Microsoft Azure block 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 Add 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 Account kind as 'BlobStorage' with your appropriate Replication and availability policy. 

Select Next : 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 'Public endpoint (all networks)' and choose Next : Advanced 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 Advanced leave all settings as they are: 

Secure transfer will ensure all traffic is HTTPS. Hierarchical namespace does not apply to LucidLink as our Filespace is providing the global namespace. Our Filespace performs garbage collection and maintains snapshots therefore Blob soft delete should remain disabled.

6. Next : Tags to continue. Provide any preferred Tags or select Next : 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 go to resource.

9. To locate your Access keys navigate to Settings. Note your Key for your Storage account name. you will need it to initialize 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 select Microsoft Azure blob storage tile when creating your Filespace.

11. Select your closest Region to your workload and to where you earlier created your Storage account in Step 3b. 

12. If you want to provide your own Container name, select to provide accordingly, otherwise LucidLink will create a unique container in your storage account. 

Select Next to continue and Create to accept your Filespace settings. Reach out to us via our chat should you have any difficulties. 

13. After you select create you will notice the Filespace being prepared, which will take a minute to complete.

14. Once your Filespace is ready for initialization. If you have not done so previously, download and install the LucidLink client. Then follow the steps in the LucidLink web portal to initialize your Filespace.

15. Initializing your Filespace involves providing your Storage account and its access key. 

16. You will also be asked for a root account password which is used to encrypt your Filespace to prevent unauthorized data access.

17. Congratulations! your Azure Blob Storage Filespace is ready to use. Consult our Support Home for advanced features and functions such as User Access Controls, managing your Shares and maintaining Snapshots.

If you wish to specify additional options you can initialize manually with our command line, please review "lucid help init-azure" for further details such as data layout block size. review our Command line Filespace initialization KB for guidance. 

Example initialization string:

lucid init-azure --fs <filespace.dom> --https --account-name <storageaccount> --account-key <accesskey> --container-name <container> --block-size <256K>

Supported unit suffixes: K(iB), M(iB). Min 1KiB. Max 32MiB.

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