Azure Blob Storage Setup Guide

Follow our setup guide to connect Azure Blob Storage to Fivetran.

Prerequisites

To connect Azure Blob Storage to Fivetran, you need:

An Azure Blob Storage container holding files with supported file types and encodings
The ability to grant Fivetran the ability to read and list files from this container

Setup instructions

Select connection method

IMPORTANT: The Connection Method option is only available for Business Critical accounts.

First decide whether to connect Fivetran to your Azure Blob Storage container directly, using an SSH tunnel, or using Azure Private Link.

Connect directly

Fivetran connects directly to your Azure Blob Storage container. This is the simplest connection method.

If you have a firewall enabled, create a firewall rule to allow access to Fivetran's IPs.

If you have a firewall enabled and your Fivetran instance is configured to run in the same region as your Azure Storage Account, you need to configure virtual network rules and add Fivetran's internal virtual network subnets to the list of allowed virtual networks. Learn more in Microsoft's Azure Blob Storage documentation. Reach out to support in order to retrieve the list of region-specific fully qualified subnet IDs.

Connect using Private Link

IMPORTANT: You must have a Business Critical plan to use Azure Private Link.

Azure Private Link allows Virtual Networks (VNets) and Azure-hosted or on-premises services to communicate with one another without exposing traffic to the public internet. Learn more in Microsoft's Azure Private Link documentation.

Follow our Azure Private Link setup guide to configure Private Link for your storage container.

Connect using SSH (TLS optional)

IMPORTANT: Do not perform this step if you want to use the Hybrid Deployment model for your data pipeline.

Fivetran connects to a separate server in your network that provides an SSH tunnel to your Azure Blob Storage container. You must connect through SSH if your container is in an inaccessible subnet on a virtual network.

To connect using SSH, create a firewall rule to allow access to your SSH tunnel server's IP address.

Before you proceed to the next step, you must follow our SSH connection instructions to give Fivetran access to your SSH tunnel. If you want Fivetran to tunnel SSH over TLS, follow Azure's TLS setup instructions to enforce a minimum TLS required version on your namespace.

Create shared access signature in Azure

IMPORTANT: You can re-use the Shared Access Signature (SAS) across multiple Fivetran connectors.

Open the Azure Portal.
Select your storage account and click Shared access signature.
Select Blob from the Allowed services options.
Select Container and Object from the Allowed resource types options.
Select Read and List from the Allowed permissions options.
Choose the appropriate start and expiry dates of your SAS.
IMPORTANT: When the SAS expires, you will have to update your Azure Blob Storage connector to resume syncing files.
(Optional) To enhance security, safelist Fivetran's IP address range under Allowed IP addresses. Azure only allows one IP range per SAS token. Skip this step if you have already configured Fivetran's internal virtual network subnets.
IMPORTANT: Use the IP range format to safelist the IP addresses, for example, 35.234.176.144-35.234.176.151, because the CIDR format, for example, 35.234.176.144/29, is not supported in Azure Portal.
Select HTTPS only from the Allowed protocols options. We recommend that you select HTTPS only to ensure the security of your files.
Click Generate SAS and connection string.
Make a note of the Connection string value. You need it to configure Fivetran.

Finish Fivetran configuration

In the connector setup form, enter your Destination schema name.
Enter your Destination table and Container Name.
Enter the Connection String you found in Azure.
Connect
1. If you're on a Business Critical plan, choose how Fivetran should connect to your Azure storage container. You can choose to:
  - Connect directly
  - Connect via Private Link
  - (Not applicable to Hybrid Deployment) Connect via SSH tunnel. If you chose Connect via SSH Tunnel, do the following:
    - Enter the IP address of storage container (or the domain address )
    - Enter the IP address of host tunnel machine
    - Enter the username of account in host tunnel machine
    - Copy the Public Key from the connector setup form and paste it into the .ssh/authorized_keys file inside the home folder on the tunnel machine.
  NOTE: For connectors configured for Hybrid Deployment, Connect directly is pre-selected in the Connection Method field.
2. (Optional) Click Run connection test to validate the login credentials and connection to the SFTP server.
  NOTE: You can skip this intermediate test and proceed to the next step. However, if you choose to skip, we will perform this test once you have finished your configuration.
Select files
Choose your configuration options. Using these configuration options, you can select subsets of your folders, specific types of files, and more to sync only the files you need in your destination. In addition, setting up multiple connectors targeted at the same container but with different options allows you to slice and dice a container any way you'd like.
- (Optional) Folder Path - Use the folder path to specify a portion of the file system in which you'd like Fivetran to look for files. We examine files under the specified folder and all of its nested subfolders for files we can sync. If you don't provide a prefix, we'll look through the entire file system for files to sync.
- (Optional) File Pattern - Use a regular expression as the file pattern to decide whether or not to sync specific files. The pattern applies to everything under the prefix (folder path). If you're unsure what regular expression to use, you can leave this field blank, and we'll sync everything under the prefix.
  For example, if under the prefix you have a folder data, which has sub-folders, subFolder1, subFolder2, etc. These sub-folders have JSON files with the format report_03/12/2050.json. Use the following regex patters to decide whether or not to sync specific files:
  - data/.* matches all the files in the data folder.
  - data/subFolder1/.*\.json matches all the JSON files in the subFolder1.
  - data/subFolder2/report_.*\.json matches all the JSON files in the subFolder2 folder that has a name that starts with the prefix report_.. For example, report_file.json.
  - report_\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4}\.json matches all the JSON files that begin with the prefix report_ and are followed by a date format of DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY. For example, report_03/12/2050.json.
  TIP: We recommend that you test your regex.
- (Optional) Click Preview Files to validate the file pattern.
  NOTE: You can skip this intermediate test and proceed to the next step. However, if you choose to skip, we will perform this test once you have finished your configuration.
- Compression - If your files are compressed but do not have extensions indicating the compression method, you can decompress them according to the selected compression algorithm.
  - If all of your compressed files are correctly marked with a matching compression extension (.bz2, .gz, .gzip, .tar, or .zip), you can select infer.
  - If you select uncompressed, we do not decompress the files and sync the uncompressed files.
  - If you choose a compression format, we decompress every file using the format you select. For example, if you have an automated CSV output system that GZIPs files to save space but saves them without a .gzip extension, you can set this field to GZIP. We will decompress every file that we examine using GZIP.
- (Optional) Archive Folder Pattern - Use a regular expression to filter and sync files from archived folders. We sync the files in compressed archives with filenames matching the specified pattern. If there are multiple files within archive (TAR or ZIP) folders, you can use the archive folder pattern to filter file types.
  For example, if you specify the archive folder pattern as .*json, we will sync only the files that end in a .json file extension from the archive folder.
  NOTE: This is only used to filter out the files inside the archived folder. All the file matching the File Pattern will be listed
Format
- File Type - Note that all files are processed as the selected file type. Use the File Pattern field to select the file extensions you want to sync.
  If your file type is XML, we load your XML data into the _data column without flattening it.
  If your file type is CSV, TSV, or log, then enter the following details:
  - (Optional) Delimiter - Specify the delimiter used in your CSV file. If your CSV file uses a custom delimiter, replace the default comma , with your specific delimiter. For example, if your file is tab-delimited, enter \t, or if it’s pipe-delimited, enter |. If you leave this field blank, we’ll attempt to detect the delimiter for each file automatically. However, note that automatic detection may not work in all cases. If your files sync with an incorrect number of columns or use a unique delimiter, consider specifying the delimiter. You can store files with different delimiters in the same folder. For more details on how delimiter inference works, see our documentation.
  - Quote character - Typically CSVs use double quotes " to enclose a value. Set the toggle to off if you don’t want to use an enclosing character.
  - Non-Standard escape character - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV generator uses non-standard ways of escaping characters like newline, delimiter, etc. Not standard in CSVs.
  - Null Sequence - Set the toggle to ON if your CSVs use a special value indicating null. Specify the value indicating null only if you are sure your CSVs have a null sequence. Typically, CSVs have no native notion of a null character. However, some CSV generators have created one, using characters such as \N to represent null.
  - Skip Header Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number of header lines at the beginning of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped header lines field, specify the number of header lines you want to skip.
  - Skip Footer Lines - Use this option to skip over a fixed number footer lines at the end of your CSV files. Set the toggle to ON, and then in the Number of skipped footer lines field, specify the number of footer lines you want to skip.
  - Headerless files - Set the toggle to ON if your CSV-generating software doesn't provide a header line. Fivetran can generate generic column names and sync data rows with them.
  - Line Separator - Line separators are used in CSV files to separate one row from the next. By default, we use the new line character \n as the line separator. If you use a different line separator for your CSV files, replace \n with your custom line separator.
  If your file type is JSON or JSONL, then select the following:
  JSON Delivery Mode - Use this option to choose how Fivetran should handle your JSON data.
  - If you select Packed, we load all your JSON data into the _data column without flattening it.
  - If you select Unpacked, we flatten one level of columns and infer their data types.
- Beta Primary Key used for file process and load - Use this option to let Fivetran know how you'd like to update the files in your destination. When you modify a previously synced file, the option you select determines if we should replace the rows in the destination table or append new rows to the table:
  - If you select Upsert file using file name and line number, we will upsert your data using the surrogate primary keys _file and _line. If a file has a unique name, we will sync the data for that file as new data.
  - If you select Append file using file modified time, we will upsert your files using surrogate primary keys _file, _line, and _modified. You can track the full history of a file or set of files and your files will have a combination of old and new data or data that is updated periodically.
  - If you select Upsert file using custom primary key, you can keep the most recent version of every record and your files will have a combination of the old and new data or data that is updated periodically. You can choose the primary keys you want to use after you save and test. For more information, see our documentation.
  NOTE: You can modify the primary keys only if your initial sync fails. If your initial sync is successful, the option to modify the primary keys is not available.
Additional options
- Error Handling - Use the error handling option to choose how to handle errors in your files. If you know that your files contain some errors, you can choose to skip poorly formatted lines.
  - If you select skip, we ignore improperly formatted data within a file, allowing you to sync only valid data.
  - If you select fail, we fail the sync with an error on finding any improperly formatted data.
  TIP: We recommend that you select fail unless you are sure that you have undesirable, malformed data. You will receive a notification on your Fivetran dashboard if we encounter errors.
- (Optional) PGP Encryption Options - Use this option to sync PGP encrypted files. Set the toggle to ON and specify the following:
  - PGP Private Key - Upload the PGP secret key as an attachment.
  - (Optional) Passphrase - Enter the passphrase you used to generate the key.
  - (Optional) Signer's Public Key - Upload the signer's public key as an attachment. This key is used for verifying the files.
  NOTE: For PGP decryption processes, we strictly comply with the RFC4880 standard. We support syncing only base64 encoded files.
(Hybrid Deployment only) If your destination is configured for Hybrid Deployment, the Hybrid Deployment Agent associated with your destination is pre-selected in the Select an existing agent drop-down menu. To use a different agent, select the agent of your choice, and then select the same agent for your destination.
Click Save & Test. Fivetran will take it from here and sync your data from your Azure Blob storage account.
Fivetran tests and validates the Azure Blob Storage connection. On successful completion of the setup tests, you can sync your Azure Blob Storage data to your destination.

Setup tests

Fivetran performs the following Azure Blob Storage connection tests:

The Connectivity test validates your Azure Blob Storage credentials and checks if Fivetran is able to connect to Azure Blob Storage container via Private Link. We perform this test only if you have configured your connector using Connect via Private Link.
The Connecting to Container test validates the container name you specified in the setup form and checks the accessibility of your storage container.
The Validating File Pattern Regex test validates the file pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the File Pattern field.
The Validating Archive Pattern test validates the archive pattern regex you specified in the setup form. We perform this test only if you specify a regex in the Archive Folder Pattern field.
The Validating EscapeChar test validates the escape character you specified for your CSV files and checks the length of the character which must not be more than one. We perform this test only if you set the Non-standard character escaping? toggle to ON and specify an escape character in the Escape Character field.
The Multi-Character Delimiter Support test validates the length of the delimiter which must be within 15 characters. We perform this test only if you specify the delimiter for your CSV files in the Delimiter field.
The PGP Support test validates whether the connector can successfully retrieve a minimum of one sample file and a maximum of ten sample files from Azure Blob Storage and decrypt them using the PGP keys you uploaded. We perform this test only if you set the PGP Encryption Options toggle to ON.