How to Configure Anonymous Access and Use SFTP with Azure Blob Storage

Question

How can I configure anonymous access for Azure Blob Storage and what are the alternatives to using AD principal with SFTP?

 "PS - Based on common issues that we have seen from customers and other sources, we are posting these questions to help the Azure community."

Answer 1

Greetings!

To configure anonymous access for Azure Blob Storage, you need to ensure that the storage account is set up to allow anonymous read access to blobs. As discussed, you were able to test anonymous access on Azure blob and it worked as expected.

To configure anonymous access for Azure Blob Storage, follow these steps:

Set Up Container Public Access:

Navigate to your Azure Storage account in the Azure portal.

Go to the "Containers" section under "Blob service."

Select the container you want to configure.

Click on "Change access level" and set it to "Container (anonymous read access for blobs only)" or "Blob (anonymous read access for blobs only)" as needed.

For taking backups from Azure Blob Storage, you can use AzCopy to copy data to another storage account or locally. For more detailed information on this, refer to the provided documentation links.

Regarding your query on using AD principal with SFTP, Azure Storage does not currently support shared access signatures or Microsoft Entra authentication for accessing the SFTP endpoint. Instead, you must use an identity called a local user, which can be secured with an Azure-generated password or a secure shell (SSH) key pair. We are aware of the need for AD integration and have raised this with our product team for future consideration. Resources:

• Configure anonymous read access for containers and blobs
• AzCopy
• Data recovery and backup options

Hope this helps. If you have any follow-up questions, please let me know. I would be happy to help.

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