Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer

 

Azure Storage Explorer is an app which support for Azure storage data on Windows , Linux and MacOS.

This is a very handy tool which will help you to do more stuff with the Azure storage, I have used this to do more things with the Azure Virtual machine VHD/ Storage expansion, VHD export locally and manage the blobs.

Key features in the Storage explorer are mentioned below,

Support macOS, Linux, and Windows versions

Sign in to view your Storage Accounts grouped by subscription:

• Use your Org Account, Microsoft Account, 2FA, etc
• Configure and manage proxy settings
• Remove accounts by signing out
• Sign in to Azure China, Azure Germany, and Azure US Government accounts.

Connect to Storage Accounts using:

• Account name and Key
• Custom endpoints (including Azure China)
• SAS URI for Storage Accounts

ARM and Classic Storage support

Generate SAS keys for blobs, blob containers, queues, tables, or file shares

Connect to blob containers, queues, tables, or file shares with Shared Access Signatures (SAS) key

Blobs

• View blobs and navigate through directories
• Upload, download, delete, and copy blobs and folders
• Create, manage, and promote blob snapshots.
• Open and view the contents text and picture blobs
• View and edit blob properties and metadata
• Search for blobs by prefix
• Create and break leases for blobs and blob containers
• Drag ‘n drop files to upload
• Rename blobs and folders
• Empty "virtual" folders can now be created in blob containers
• You can modify the Blob and file properties

Tables

• View and query entities with ODATA or use query builder to create complex queries
• Add, edit, delete entities
• Import and export table contents in CSV format (including exporting query results)
• Customize column order
• Ability to save queries

Queues

• Peek most recent 32 messages
• Add, dequeue, view messages
• Clear queue
• We made it possible for you to decide whether you want to encode/decode your queue messages

File Shares

• View files and navigate through directories
• Upload, download, delete, and copy files and directories
• View file properties
• Rename files and directories

There are more features available and those you can find on the Storage Explorer main  page.

Here I’m going to show few steps that you can follow to start working with the Azure Explorer

First, you need to download the  Storage Explorer client tool. That you can find by going into storageexplorer.com  location.

Once you launch the Storage Explorer, First you will get the below window asking about the method that you want to use to connect to your Azure account

Click Sign In and then give the Azure portal credentials. After the verification, It will open the storage under Storage Explorer window.

Now you will be able to manage your Azure storage and the blobs, etc by using this Storage Explorer connector.

 

Hope this tool will help you to save your time to do more troubleshooting,

How to Edit the Windows registry remotely

 

Here I’m going to show steps to change the RDP default port in a server.

In my case, what happened was I have changed the RDP port in my azure environment and change the endpoint policy accordingly. Unfortunately, I was not able to RDP into my Azure VM and not able to connect through the Azure portal also.

Then I have added a another PC into the same resource group (Which will reflect the same subnet) and connect to the server registry remotely and edit that.

Here I’ll show two methods to change default RDP port a Server.

1. RDP Port Change – Locally

Go into registry and go to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

Select edit DWORD and select Decimal. You will see the port 3389 given and change that to the port which you want to change. Click OK to save.

 

2. How to Edit the Windows registry remotely

Open the Registry editor in another PC which is in same subnet. Go to File> Connect to network Registry.

Then select the PC or the saver name which you want to remotely connect.

Now you will be able to control the registry in the other server.

If you want to change the RDP port back to default or another port, now you should be able to do that by go into below location.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\TerminalServer\WinStations\RDP-Tcp\PortNumber

Create a Resource group in Azure

Here I’m gonna talk about creating the Resource group by using PowerShell.

First you need to login into the Azure portal by using the subscription that you have.

Then give the correct credentials and remotely connect to your Azure portal.

To Deploy a resource  first you need to find the correct location. To find the a available  locations you can run Below Command,

Get-AzureRmLocation | sort DisplayName | Select DisplayName 

To Create a new Azure Resource group, you can try the following command. Here I have used the Resource group name as "SL_Resource_Group" and the location as "East Asia"

New-AzureRmResourceGroup -Name "SL_Resource_Group" -Location "East Asia"

You will get the confirmation as below,

Here I'm going to create a VM by using a already given script. Once you run that, It will  create the VM under the resource group which you have created earlier. This will prompt for username, Password, DNS name 

New-AzureRmResourceGroupDeployment -ResourceGroupName "SL_Resource_Group" -TemplateUri https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Azure/azure-quickstart-templates/master/101-vm-simple-windows/azuredeploy.json