# Connect SlateDB to Azure Blob Storage

> Learn how to connect SlateDB to Azure Blob Storage

This tutorial shows you how to use SlateDB on Azure Blob Storage (ABS). You would need an ABS account to complete the tutorial.

## Setup

[Install](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cli/azure/install-azure-cli) the Azure CLI.

## Create Storage account

The following steps creates a storage account and list the keys. This section can be skipped if you already have a storage account created.

```bash
# Set storage account names
StorageAccountName=
ContainerName=
ResourceGroupName=

# Login
az login

# Create Resource Group in the default subscription.
az group create --name $ResourceGroupName --location westus

# Create Azure Storage account.
az storage account create --name $StorageAccountName --resource-group $ResourceGroupName --location westus --sku Standard_LRS

# Create a storage container
az storage container create --name $ContainerName --account-name $StorageAccountName

# Get the keys.
az storage account keys list --resource-group $ResourceGroupName --account-name $StorageAccountName
```

## Create a project

Let's start by creating a new Rust project:

```bash
cargo init slatedb-abs
cd slatedb-abs
```

## Add dependencies

Now add SlateDB and the required dependencies to your `Cargo.toml`:

```bash
cargo add slatedb tokio --features tokio/macros,tokio/rt-multi-thread
cargo add object-store --features object-store/azure
cargo add anyhow
```

:::note

If you see "`object_store::path::Path` and `object_store::path::Path` have similar names, but are actually distinct types", you might need to pin the `object_store` version to match `slatedb`'s `object_store` version. SlateDB also exports `slatedb::object_store` for convenience, if you'd rather use that.

:::

## Write some code

This code demonstrates puts that wait for results to be durable, and then puts that do not wait.
<!-- could not inline /home/runner/work/slatedb/examples/src/azure_blob_storage.rs -->

## Check the blob contents

```bash
az storage blob list --container-name $ContainerName --account-name $StorageAccountName --prefix "tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/" --delimiter "/" --output table
                           compactions/
                           wal/
                           manifest/
```

SlateDB uses four top-level directories over time:

- `manifest`: Contains the manifest files. Manifest files define the state of the DB, including the set of SSTs that are part of the DB.
- `wal`: Contains the write-ahead log files.
- `compacted`: Contains the compacted SST files (may not appear in short examples).
- `compactions`: Contains the compaction-state snapshots.

Let's check the `wal` folder.

```bash
az storage blob list --container-name $ContainerName --account-name $StorageAccountName --prefix "tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/wal/" --delimiter "/" --output table

Name                                                         Blob Type    Blob Tier    Length    Content Type              Last Modified              Snapshot
-----------------------------------------------------------  -----------  -----------  --------  ------------------------  -------------------------  ----------
tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/wal/00000000000000000001.sst  BlockBlob    Hot          64        application/octet-stream  2024-09-07T01:15:49+00:00
tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/wal/00000000000000000002.sst  BlockBlob    Hot          138       application/octet-stream  2024-09-07T01:15:49+00:00
tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/wal/00000000000000000003.sst  BlockBlob    Hot          23388     application/octet-stream  2024-09-07T01:15:49+00:00
tmp/slatedb_azure_blob_storage/wal/00000000000000000004.sst  BlockBlob    Hot          64        application/octet-stream  2024-09-07T01:15:50+00:00

```

Each of these SST files is a write-ahead log (WAL) file, and each WAL file can contain many `RowEntry` values. They get flushed based on the `flush_interval` config or when `flush` is called explicitly.

```