AzCopy is a command-line utility that you can use to copy blobs or files to or from a storage account. This article helps you download AzCopy, connect to your storage account, and then transfer data.
Note
AzCopy V10 is the currently supported version of AzCopy.
This video shows you how to download and run the AzCopy utility.
The steps in the video are also described in the following sections.
Use cases for AzCopy
AzCopy can be used to copy your data to, from, or between Azure storage accounts. Common use cases include:
Copying data from an on-premises source to an Azure storage account
Copying data from an Azure storage account to an on-premises source
Copying data from one storage account to another storage account
Each of these use cases has unique options. For example, AzCopy has native commands for copying and/or synchronizing data. This makes AzCopy a flexible tool that can be used for one-time copy activities and ongoing synchronization scenarios. AzCopy also allows you to target specific storage services such as Azure Blob Storage or Azure Files. This allows you to copy data from blob to file, file to blob, file to file, etc.
These files are compressed as a zip file (Windows and Mac) or a tar file (Linux). To download and decompress the tar file on Linux, see the documentation for your Linux distribution.
For convenience, consider adding the directory location of the AzCopy executable to your system path for ease of use. That way you can type azcopy from any directory on your system.
If you choose not to add the AzCopy directory to your path, you'll have to change directories to the location of your AzCopy executable and type azcopy or .\azcopy in Windows PowerShell command prompts.
As an owner of your Azure Storage account, you aren't automatically assigned permissions to access data. Before you can do anything meaningful with AzCopy, you need to decide how you'll provide authorization credentials to the storage service.
Authorize AzCopy
You can provide authorization credentials by using Microsoft Entra ID, or by using a Shared Access Signature (SAS) token.
Option 1: Use Microsoft Entra ID
By using Microsoft Entra ID, you can provide credentials once instead of having to append a SAS token to each command.
Option 2: Use a SAS token
You can append a SAS token to each source or destination URL that use in your AzCopy commands.
This example command recursively copies data from a local directory to a blob container. A fictitious SAS token is appended to the end of the container URL.
The Secure transfer required setting of a storage account determines whether the connection to a storage account is secured with Transport Layer Security (TLS). This setting is enabled by default.
Transfer data
After you've authorized your identity or obtained a SAS token, you can begin transferring data.
To find example commands, see any of these articles.
Change the access tier of one or more blobs and replace (overwrite) the metadata, and index tags of one or more blobs.
Note
AzCopy does not have a command to rename files.
Use in a script
Obtain a static download link
Over time, the AzCopy download link will point to new versions of AzCopy. If your script downloads AzCopy, the script might stop working if a newer version of AzCopy modifies features that your script depends upon.
To avoid these issues, obtain a static (unchanging) link to the current version of AzCopy. That way, your script downloads the same exact version of AzCopy each time that it runs.
For Linux, --strip-components=1 on the tar command removes the top-level folder that contains the version name, and instead extracts the binary directly into the current folder. This allows the script to be updated with a new version of azcopy by only updating the wget URL.
The URL appears in the output of this command. Your script can then download AzCopy by using that URL.
Linux
wget -O azcopy_v10.tar.gz https://aka.ms/downloadazcopy-v10-linux && tar -xf azcopy_v10.tar.gz --strip-components=1
In batch files that have the .cmd extension, you'll have to escape the % characters that appear in SAS tokens. You can do that by adding an extra % character next to existing % characters in the SAS token string. The resulting character sequence appears as %%. Make sure to add an extra ^ before each & character to create the character sequence ^&.
Run scripts by using Jenkins
If you plan to use Jenkins to run scripts, make sure to place the following command at the beginning of the script.
/usr/bin/keyctl new_session
Use in Azure Storage Explorer
Storage Explorer uses AzCopy to perform all of its data transfer operations. You can use Storage Explorer if you want to apply the performance advantages of AzCopy, but you prefer to use a graphical user interface rather than the command line to interact with your files.
Storage Explorer uses your account key to perform operations, so after you sign into Storage Explorer, you won't need to provide additional authorization credentials.