Would a Azure Storage Web UI be useful?

Question

Hi all,

Whilst working on an Azure project (mostly dev fabric based, little bit in the actual cloud) I found I frequently wanted to look at the state of the azure storage (blob/queue/table) to view status of the app, check a blob/record had been successfully stored, etc.

I am aware that it is possible to mount storage in powershell, view table storage via SQL Management Studio etc.

What I was wondering is if other Azure devs think it would be useful to have a Web-based Storage UI, which would allow you to view Blob/Queue/Table storage, in a nice AJAX/Silverlight/etc web front-end, with the ability to add/remove/delete items...???


It may be that I'm alone in thinking this would be cool and very useful, or maybe it has already been done, or planned for future releases.

Let me know and if there's a gap in the market, i'm happy to build it!

Cheers, j

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joew

Answer 1

Sounds good to me.
I've not been able to get the pug in to work - no documentation.

Andy

Answer 2

There are several UIs for Azure storage and logs available, but the ones I've tried leave much to be desired. Examples:

Sergei Meleshchuk’s Azure storage viewer post of 12/24/2008 showed a storage browser for Queues, Blogs and Tables that looked promising, but it wouldn’t run for me. Starting the app causes it to immediately stop running under Windows Vista Ultimate on two computers. Others confirm it won't run on Vista. If Sergei fixes his app to run on Vista, it probably would satisfy most users.

Chris Hay offers his Windows Azure Blob Browser WPF application for CRUD operations on Azure blobs that you can download from here. It's list boxes aren't expandable and don't have scrollbars, but I use it.

David Aiken’s Windows Azure Online Log Reader is a no-frills Azure Services log reader by the author of Yap, an Azure-based Twitter clone with LiveID login but a terrible user experience.

David Lemphers’ Windows Azure Logs! post of 1/1/2009 starts the new year with a spartan LogBrowser project that I couldn’t get to read my logs.

Above are from recent OakLeaf blog posts.

--rj

Check out the Azure Table and Blob test harnesses at http://oakleaf.cloudapp.net/ and http://oakleaf2.cloudapp.net/.

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OakLeaf Blog

Answer 3

checkout spaceblock.  Does blobs great.  probably will do tables soon.
http://www.codeplex.com/spaceblock

Answer 4

ok, i'm gonna have a go at making this!

Does anyone have any desired features?

• Ability to add/modify/delete (batch option)
• Silverlight / HTML AJAX UI
• Support for Blob/Table/Queue storage
• Support for Blob Block view?
  
• What else??????

Thanks

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joew

Answer 5

Azure Storage Explorer will show you your blobs, queue messages, and table records.

http://www.codeplex.com/azurestorageexplorer

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David Pallmann, Director, .NET Application Development, Neudesic

Answer 6

David,

A Web UI for blobs and tables also should be able to display log files.

--rj

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OakLeaf Blog

Answer 7

I agree. I'll look into it.

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David Pallmann, Director, .NET Application Development, Neudesic

Answer 8

Sorry Dave, didn't see your tool. looks great! think i'll use that

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joew

Answer 9

You can now view log files with Azure Storage Explorer, Roger.

Azure Storage Explorer has been updated on CodePlex.

 

There are 3 items of interest in the new 0.3 preview version:

1. It's built against the January 2009 Azure CTP.
2. Blobs in a folder hierarchy (with prefixes) now display and can be viewed.
3. Blobs whose names end in ".xml" (like log files) are auto-formatted as pretty XML with whitespace to make them more readable.

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David Pallmann, Director, .NET Application Development, Neudesic

Answer 10

We have just finished development of a Silverlight 2.0 based client for Azure Table Storage. We are expecting to release it in next few weeks. If anybody is interested in trying it out before, please send me an email at gmantri @ cerebrata dot com and I will send you a link.

Since it is just out of development and is being tested as we speak, I don't want to make that link publicly available just yet. Once the testing is over, we will make it available to public so that everybody can start using it.

At this time we have only built table storage management (create/delete) and entities management (create/update/delete) + it has ability to manage multiple accounts simultaneously (like you can manage multiple databases in Management Studio). We intend to add Queue and BLOB support in next few releases.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri
Cerebrata Software
http://omega.cerebrata.com

Answer 11

Azure Storage Explorer version 2.0 has just been posted on CodePlex at  http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/.

- WPF-based UI with Outlook-style navigation and more polish
- Ability to view pictures in blob storage as images
- Support for multiple storage accounts

David

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David Pallmann, Director, .NET Application Development, Neudesic

Answer 12

You can check this out as well: www.cloud9-explorer.com

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Jörgen Verhart

Answer 13

I checked all of the tools above and have to say that I prefer Cerebrata's tool (https://onlinedemo.cerebrata.com/Cerebrata.CloudStorage/default.aspx) best of all. The #1 feature for me there is the ability to create/update/delete table storage entries (honestly I don't see how tool can claim support for ATS without this) and edit their properties. The ability to see blob's content and to save user credentials are must haves as well.

Answer 14

Hi,

Thought I should mention it here as well. We have just released a Desktop version of Cloud Storage Studio (tool mentioned by Jason above) in private beta. More information & sign up sheet is available on our website: http://www.cerebrata.com or visit this thread about the tool: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/windowsazure/thread/4c0578a3-a5da-41ed-b29d-55067c6dcc50 (You will have to scroll down to read about the desktop version).

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri
http://www.cerebrata.com

P.S. Thanks for your recommendation Jason.

Answer 15

Azure Storage Explorer 3.0 (beta) is now available at http://AzureStorageExplorer.CodePlex.com. It includes the ability to import/export between cloud storage and your local file system.

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David Pallmann, Director, .NET Application Development, Neudesic