Shared Storage With Azure Virtual Machine

Keep in mind that you can have multiple files inside a File Share but you are restricted to the capacity of 5 TB and the maximum file size is 1 TB.

Now, we will try to connect the Virtual Machine to it. Again, a point to remember here is that your virtual machine should be in the same resource group where your file share resides.

We can have multiple virtual machines connecting to a single File Share.

Before we try to connect our VM to the File Share, we must have our access keys handy.

Step 9

Go to your storage account >> click on Access Keys and copy the first key.

Step 10 - Launch your VM.

Go to your Resource Group >> Select VM and click on "Create". If you do not have any VM created, you can create a simple VM with Windows Server OS. You can refer my other articles to create a VM.

Step 11 - Mount SMB File Share to Azure VM.

Once we are logged in to the VM, we will mount our SMB File Share to this VM. Same steps you can perform to mount the SMB file share to another VM.

Now inside the VM, open PowerShell ISE.

Step 12

Go to your File Share and copy the path of your File Share as shown below.

Step 13 - persist your VM credentials with cmdkey.

Now, we will use cmdkey cmdlet to persist our credentials. So, after the reboot of your VM, you don’t need to re-enter the credentials to mount your File Share.

Command :

cmdkey /add:smbstorageacc.file.core.windows.net /user: smbstorageacc /pass: 5e695JE4jtMBPHfNQglaPFZoH9BnHeBHBH9FZqmG1l7HoAgeQXE39ZLWSxNTgGqXeaClUQMR0pXIl1DKIYfZkw==

Here, first, we define URL of our storage account in the add parameter (add:smbstorageacc.file.core.windows.net ), then user parameter holds my storage account name (smbstorageacc) and pass parameter contains the access key for the storage account pass:

5e695JE4jtMBPHfNQglaPFZoH9BnHeBHBH9FZqmG1l7HoAgeQXE39ZLWSxNTgGqXeaClUQMR0pXIl1DKIYfZkw==

You can see as a result, the credentials would be added successfully.

So, after reboot, our shared drive would be always mounted.

Step 14 - Mount share dirve using net use command.

Now, we will mount our Shared Drive. We will use net use command followed by the drive letter which connects to the storage account\file share name.

Command : net use k: \\smbstorageacc.file.core.windows.net\coursecontents

Step 15 - Check the output.

Now, if you go to Windows Explorer, you can see that your File Share is mounted.

If you dig into that, you can see all the directories and within Microsoft Azure directory, you will get the files too.

Now, right-click and add a new text document to Microsoft Azure Directory.

In the same way, if you have multiple VMs connected with the Azure File Share, the VMs can share files , .exes, tools and softwares. They all can write in the same log files etc…

The only thing to keep in mind is that your VMs and File Share must be in the same Resource Group.