An Azure storage account contains all of your Azure Storage data objects: blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks. The storage account provides a unique namespace for your Azure Storage data that is accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS. Data in your Azure storage account is durable and highly available, secure, and massively scalable.
This article has been updated to use the new Azure PowerShell Az
module. You can still use the AzureRM module, which will continue to receive bug fixes until at least December 2020.
To learn more about the new Az module and AzureRM compatibility, see
Introducing the new Azure PowerShell Az module. For
Az module installation instructions, see Install Azure PowerShell.
Prerequisites
If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.
This how-to article requires the Azure PowerShell module Az version 0.7 or later. Run Get-Module -ListAvailable Az to find your current version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install Azure PowerShell module.
You can sign in to Azure and run Azure CLI commands in one of two ways:
You can run CLI commands from within the Azure portal, in Azure Cloud Shell.
You can install the CLI and run CLI commands locally.
Use Azure Cloud Shell
Azure Cloud Shell is a free Bash shell that you can run directly within the Azure portal. The Azure CLI is pre-installed and configured to use with your account. Click the Cloud Shell button on the menu in the upper-right section of the Azure portal:
The button launches an interactive shell that you can use to run the steps outlined in this how-to article:
Install the CLI locally
You can also install and use the Azure CLI locally. This how-to article requires that you are running the Azure CLI version 2.0.4 or later. Run az --version to find the version. If you need to install or upgrade, see Install the Azure CLI.
Sign in to your Azure subscription with the Connect-AzAccount command and follow the on-screen directions to authenticate.
Connect-AzAccount
To launch Azure Cloud Shell, sign in to the Azure portal.
To log into your local installation of the CLI, run the az login command:
az login
N/A
Create a storage account
Now you are ready to create a storage account.
Every storage account must belong to an Azure resource group. A resource group is a logical container for grouping your Azure services. When you create a storage account, you have the option to either create a new resource group, or use an existing resource group. This article shows how to create a new resource group.
A general-purpose v2 storage account provides access to all of the Azure Storage services: blobs, files, queues, tables, and disks. The steps outlined here create a general-purpose v2 storage account, but the steps to create any type of storage account are similar.
To create a general-purpose v2 storage account in the Azure portal, follow these steps:
On the Azure portal menu, select All services. In the list of resources, type Storage Accounts. As you begin typing, the list filters based on your input. Select Storage Accounts.
On the Storage Accounts window that appears, choose Add.
Select the subscription in which to create the storage account.
Under the Resource group field, select Create new. Enter a name for your new resource group, as shown in the following image.
Next, enter a name for your storage account. The name you choose must be unique across Azure. The name also must be between 3 and 24 characters in length, and can include numbers and lowercase letters only.
Select a location for your storage account, or use the default location.
Leave these fields set to their default values:
Field
Value
Deployment model
Resource Manager
Performance
Standard
Account kind
StorageV2 (general-purpose v2)
Replication
Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
Access tier
Hot
Select Review + Create to review your storage account settings and create the account.
First, create a new resource group with PowerShell using the New-AzResourceGroup command:
# put resource group in a variable so you can use the same group name going forward,
# without hard-coding it repeatedly
$resourceGroup = "storage-resource-group"
New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroup -Location $location
If you're not sure which region to specify for the -Location parameter, you can retrieve a list of supported regions for your subscription with the Get-AzLocation command:
Next, create a general-purpose v2 storage account with read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) by using the New-AzStorageAccount command. Remember that the name of your storage account must be unique across Azure, so replace the placeholder value in brackets with your own unique value:
To create a general-purpose v2 storage account with a different replication option, substitute the desired value in the table below for the SkuName parameter.
First, create a new resource group with Azure CLI using the az group create command.
az group create \
--name storage-resource-group \
--location westus
If you're not sure which region to specify for the --location parameter, you can retrieve a list of supported regions for your subscription with the az account list-locations command.
az account list-locations \
--query "[].{Region:name}" \
--out table
Next, create a general-purpose v2 storage account with read-access geo-redundant storage by using the az storage account create command. Remember that the name of your storage account must be unique across Azure, so replace the placeholder value in brackets with your own unique value:
To create a general-purpose v2 storage account with a different replication option, substitute the desired value in the table below for the sku parameter.
You can use either Azure Powershell or Azure CLI to deploy a Resource Manager template to create a storage account. The template used in this how-to article is from Azure Resource Manager quickstart templates. To run the scripts, select Try it to open the Azure Cloud shell. To paste the script, right-click the shell, and then select Paste.
$resourceGroupName = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter the Resource Group name"
$location = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter the location (i.e. centralus)"
New-AzResourceGroup -Name $resourceGroupName -Location "$location"
New-AzResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName -TemplateUri "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/101-storage-account-create/azuredeploy.json"
echo "Enter the Resource Group name:" &&
read resourceGroupName &&
echo "Enter the location (i.e. centralus):" &&
read location &&
az group create --name $resourceGroupName --location "$location" &&
az group deployment create --resource-group $resourceGroupName --template-file "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/101-storage-account-create/azuredeploy.json"
az storage account delete --name <storage-account> --resource-group <resource-group>
To delete the storage account, use either Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI.
$storageResourceGroupName = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter the resource group name"
$storageAccountName = Read-Host -Prompt "Enter the storage account name"
Remove-AzStorageAccount -Name $storageAccountName -ResourceGroupName $storageResourceGroupName
echo "Enter the resource group name:" &&
read resourceGroupName &&
echo "Enter the storage account name:" &&
read storageAccountName &&
az storage account delete --name storageAccountName --resource-group resourceGroupName
Alternately, you can delete the resource group, which deletes the storage account and any other resources in that resource group. For more information about deleting a resource group, see Delete resource group and resources.
Warning
It's not possible to restore a deleted storage account or retrieve any of the content that it contained before deletion. Be sure to back up anything you want to save before you delete the account. This also holds true for any resources in the account—once you delete a blob, table, queue, or file, it is permanently deleted.
If you try to delete a storage account associated with an Azure virtual machine, you may get an error about the storage account still being in use. For help troubleshooting this error, see Troubleshoot errors when you delete storage accounts.
Next steps
In this how-to article, you've created a general-purpose v2 standard storage account. To learn how to upload and download blobs to and from your storage account, continue to one of the Blob storage quickstarts.