This section will describe step by step how to create an Azure Blob storage account:

1. Log in the Azure portal and go to New | Data + Storage | Storage Account. You should get the Storage account - blob, file, table, queue window, as shown in the following screenshot:

2. Clicking Create will bring up Create storage account, as shown in the following screenshot:

Fill in the properties as follows:

• • Name: adfv2book.
  • Deployment model: Resource manager.
  • Account kind: StorageV2 (general purpose v2).
  • Performance: Standard.
  • Replication: Locally-redundant storage (LRS).
  • Access tier (default): Hot. This means that the data will be accessed frequently.
  • Secure transfer required: Disabled. Whether the blob will be accessed using HTTP or HTTPS.
  • Subscription: The current subscription in use when you create the storage account.
  • Resource group: ADFV2CookBook.
  • Location: We used East US. Choose the location used when the resource group was created.
  • Virtual networks: No VPN will be used for now. Leave this option on Disabled.
  • Pin to dashboard: Check this box if you want the storage to appear on the Azure dashboard.

3. Click on Create to create the new Azure storage account.

4. Once the blob has been created and is visible on the dashboard, click on it. You should get something similar to the following screenshot:

5. We'll now click on the Open in Explorer icon in the top left; we get a message like the one in the following screenshot:

If the application is not installed, we'll be directed to the application download page:

6. We download and install the application. Once installed, we're asked to log in to our Azure account.

7. Once logged in, we choose our Azure subscription, as shown in the following screenshot:

We can now see the content of our Azure Blob storage. For now, it's empty; we'll fill it out later in the exercises in this book: