Recently we announced the beta release of CloudBerry Explorer for Nirvanix.

In our attempt to increase the breadth of cloud storage support and we are proud to announce CloudBerry Explorer for Microsoft Azure Blob Storage as our third product in the series

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud operating system where developers can host their applications to benefit from cloud platform. When you host application in the cloud you get virtually unlimited scalability and pay as you use model that hard to underestimate. Every cloud platform would be incomplete without storage support and Microsoft’s platform is not an exception. Azure comes with 3 types of storage: Table Storage, Queue Storage and Blob Storage.

What is Microsoft Azure Blob Storage

Among other storage types Azure Blob Storage is the one that can be compared with Amazon S3 and as its name suggests designed to store binary data. Obviously you can store the files of different types in the storage like this.

How CloudBerry Explorer supports Azure Blob Storage

First, you register account same way. We will have a separate post on how to obtain the account.

Once you register your account you can do usual file operations such create containers, folders, copy/move files between Azure Blob storage and your local computers. You can also copy files between two Azure Blob storage accounts.

Note: when you copy files between different accounts they go through your local computer.

Feature list

* Register and connect to any number of Microsoft Azure Blob Storage accounts

* Work with any number of Microsoft Azure Blob Storage accounts simultaneously

* Create, browse, and delete Microsoft Azure Blob Storage files

* Create, browse, and delete folders

* Copy and move files between Microsoft Azure Blob Storage and your local computer

* Manage containers and blobs

* Create Blob containers

* List blob containers

* Delete Container

* Upload/ Download blobs

* Copy/ Move blobs

* Delete blobs

* Rename blobs

* Veiw blobs

* Blob metadata

* Signed URL for blobs

* Ability to split blobs into multiple blocks View files properties

* Copy/Move in background

* Synchronize folders

* Copy files from Windows Explorer

* Remember user settings

* Built-in feedback form

* Automated check for updates

What’s next

As always we are going to gather user feedback and incorporate it into the product before final release. This is just a short list of things that we have on our list.

1. Support for $root container

2. Support for Conditional headers

3. Support for ACL editing

4. Support for Server timeouts

5. Support for Metadata for containers and blobs

We are also going to implement a PowerShell interface for Azure Blob storage to help users automate their routine tasks.

There are even more exciting features coming. Stay tuned!

CloudBerry Explorer for Azure is a freeware program, it is currently in beta and you can download it at http://www.cloudberrylab.com/default.aspx?page=explorer-azure

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