How Would I know my Azure Table Storage AccountName?

Question

I'm trying to move some table storage in Azure from local storage to the cloud. I had been using the "devstoreaccount1" for local access, but I'm not sure what I need to put there for moving to the cloud.

It's not the user account I used to sign up for my Azure accounts, is it? That's just my email address, and that didn't seem to work. I've tried the project name without luck either.

Is there anywhere in the portal that lists this account name?

Answer 1

It's my understanding that the account name is used to build the URL that points to your storage, so the only real criteria is that the name has to be unique, and it has to resolve to a valid url. For instance, if you put in an account name of "hotsauce" in your ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file, the path to your storage would resolve to:

http://hotsauce.table.core.windows.net

Since "devstoreaccount1" is the value they give you in the hands-on labs, I'm guessing someone claimed that name long ago. I haven't seen anything official, but I think it's a "first one in wins" game. Your e-mail address would not work either, probably, since the url would be malformed.

I've just been using a variation of my account name, per project. It's a simple combination of letters and numbers.

I've found the documentation to be pretty good, considering that Azure is in such an early stage, but there are still some ambiguities. Here is something that mentions account name:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179360.aspx