Putting files into Azure blob storage using AzCopy

One of my last blog posts was about copying data into Azure blob storage (specifically local SQL Server backups) and it turns ou that there's a command line app available that wraps up copying files to and from Azure bob storage, AzCopy. The "meat" of the code I wrote, that's responsible for copying the backup file up to Azure is:

$storageAccount = "<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>";
$storageKey = "<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY>";
$storageContainer = "orchard";

<# Authenticate against Azure storage and then write the file to it#>
$storageContext = New-AzureStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccount -StorageAccountKey $storageKey

Set-AzureStorageBlobContent -Container $storageContainer -Blob $backupFileName -File $backupFileNameAndPath -Context $storageContext -Force

With AzCopy, this can be distilled down to a single line:

AzCopy /Source:C:\myfolder /Dest:https://<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME>.blob.core.windows.net/<CONTAINER_NAME>/DestKey:<STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY> /Pattern:"<FILENAME>"

One big advantage here is that the parameter that takes the filename is a pattern, so with one command you can specify "*.bak" and upload all the files with that extension to Azure at once, rather than having to write code to loop over them.