Azure Storage Documentation

Your guide to building and managing cloud solutions

Create an Azure Blob Storage Container

A container is the fundamental unit of organization for your data in Azure Blob Storage. It holds a set of blobs, which can be any type of data, such as images, documents, or videos.

Prerequisites

Methods for Creating a Container

You can create a container using several methods:

1. Using the Azure Portal

The Azure portal provides a user-friendly graphical interface for managing your storage resources.

1

Navigate to your storage account in the Azure portal.

2

In the left-hand navigation pane, under Data storage, select Containers.

3

Click the + Container button at the top of the page.

4

In the Create container pane, enter a name for your container. Container names must be lowercase alphanumeric characters and hyphens, and must be between 3 and 63 characters long.

Choose a public access level (e.g., Private, Blob, Container) based on your needs. For most scenarios, Private is recommended for security.

5

Click Create.

2. Using Azure CLI

The Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI) is a powerful tool for managing Azure resources from your terminal.

First, ensure you are logged in to your Azure account:

az login

Then, use the following command to create a container:

az storage container create \
  --name <container-name> \
  --account-name <storage-account-name> \
  --auth-mode login

Replace <container-name> with your desired container name and <storage-account-name> with your storage account name.

You can also specify the public access level:

az storage container create \
  --name <container-name> \
  --account-name <storage-account-name> \
  --public-access blob \
  --auth-mode login

Possible values for --public-access are off (private), blob, and container.

3. Using Azure PowerShell

Azure PowerShell provides cmdlets for managing Azure resources.

Connect to your Azure account:

Connect-AzAccount

Then, use the following cmdlet to create a container:

New-AzStorageContainer -Name <container-name> -Context (New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName <storage-account-name>)

Replace <container-name> and <storage-account-name> accordingly.

To set public access:

New-AzStorageContainer -Name <container-name> -Context (New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName <storage-account-name>) -PublicAccess Blob

4. Using Azure SDKs

You can programmatically create containers using Azure SDKs for various languages (e.g., Python, .NET, Java, Node.js).

Example using Python SDK:

from azure.storage.blob import BlobServiceClient

account_name = "<your_storage_account_name>"
account_key = "<your_storage_account_key>"
container_name = "my-new-container"

# Create the BlobServiceClient object
blob_service_client = BlobServiceClient.from_connection_string(f"DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName={account_name};AccountKey={account_key};EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net")

try:
    # Create the container
    container_client = blob_service_client.create_container(container_name)
    print(f"Container '{container_name}' created successfully.")
except Exception as e:
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

Refer to the official Azure SDK documentation for your preferred language for detailed instructions.

Important: Container names are globally unique within your storage account. Choose descriptive and meaningful names.

Next Steps

Blob Storage