openlab/DataLab — Issue #3: Unable to use Windows Azure Storage Emulator
Author: SyntaxC4
Created: 2012-02-23 05:00:15+00:00
State: open

This issue is caused by the how Data Container (Windows Azure Storage) urls are created by using a replacement token (http://{0}.table.core.windows.net).

When the Data Container is setup in the *ConfigTool*, a **storagename** and **storagekey** is provided. This is used to provide the application a Storage Location to retrieve the data loaded using the DataLoader.

This is a problem when providing the local storage values as *http://devstoreaccount1.table.core.windows.net* is not a valid storage account most likely doesn't have the accountkey of *Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==*

Here is how storage urls differ between production and the storage emulator:

###Windows Azure Storage Url

+ Blob: http://<accountname>.blob.core.windows.net/<resource-path>
+ Table: http://<accountname>.table.core.windows.net/<resource-path>
+ Queue: http://<accountname>.queue.core.windows.net/<resource-path>

###Windows Azure Storage Emulator Url

+ Blob: http://127.0.0.1:10000/<accountname>/<resource-path>
+ Table: http://127.0.0.1:10001/<accountname>/<resource-path>
+ Queue: http://127.0.0.1:10002/<accountname>/<resource-path>

More details found on msdn article, [overview of running a windows azure application with local storage](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg432983.aspx)