Missing containers and files in blob storage!?

Question

Hello all -

I opened CloudBerry Explorer for Azure Blob Storage today to start troubleshooting an issue, and much to my dismay it looks like there are dozens of containers missing from our blob storage. These containers dated anywhere from 2 months ago to 8 months ago, and they had files in them, and they are all now gone. I'm more than a bit worried about this. Me and only 1 other developer have access to this and neither of us removed them.

Does anybody have any ideas as to how this could happen? Is there anything I can do to find out exactly what did happen?

 

Signed, 

-Personally Worried for the First Time About Azure

Answer 1

Contact support (http://microsoft.com/windowsazure/support). If the containers were deleted, it's quite possible they can give you information about when and how.

It's also worth trying a different tool just in case there's a bug in CloudBerry Explorer that causes those containers not to show up. (I have no specific reason to doubt CloudBerry Explorer, but it's a good diagnostic step to try something else.)

Answer 2

Thanks Steve - I opened a ticket shortly after posting. Good idea on trying another tool - will do.

Answer 3

Good call Steve - I tried another tool and they are there. So, I haven't updated CloudBerry in a long time, and I could see those containers using it just a few weeks ago, just curious on causes...

 

Thanks again.

Answer 4

When you enumerate containers, you may not get all of them in the first HTTP request to blob storage. (And that can change just based on usage patterns or other movement in the data center.) I wonder if there's a bug that doesn't handle that properly in some cases, and you just happened to hit it today.

Answer 5

Adding to what Steve has mentioned, it might be a good idea to run Fiddler alongside CloudBerry Explorer. Fiddler will tell you exactly what is returned from the storage service using which you can find out if the blob containers exist in your storage account. Or you could write a small console application using Storage Client library to enumerate blob containers.

Hope this helps.

Thanks

Gaurav Mantri

Cerebrata Software

http://www.cerebrata.com