• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage Explorer Free
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• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage Explorer Download
• Microsoft Azure Blob Storage Explorer Software
• Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer Download

Freeware Azure Blob Storage explorer allows tracking, analyzing and debugging your usage of storage. It also comes with full support for Microsoft Azure Storage Analytics. Assign Reader and Storage Blob Data Reader to an Azure Storage Account to a user (in my case, this was a guest user added to Active Directory). In Storage Explorer, add an Azure account for that user. Look at Storage Accounts. Windows Explorer is the most natural way to utilize the storage services of Windows Azure. Drag and drop files to copy them between the local file system and blob storage; use a custom view to display/edit tabular data in table storage and messages in queue storage. Open Storage Explorer. In the left pane, expand the storage account within which you wish to create the blob container. Right-click Blob Containers, and - from the context menu - select Create Blob Container. A text box will appear below the Blob Containers folder.

By default, logs ingested into Azure Sentinel are stored in Azure Monitor Log Analytics. This article explains how to reduce retention costs in Azure Sentinel by sending them to Azure Data Explorer (ADX) for long-term retention.

Storing logs in ADX reduces costs while retains your ability to query your data, and is especially useful as your data grows. For example, while security data may lose value over time, you may be required to retain logs for regulatory requirements or to run periodic investigations on older data.

About Azure Data Explorer

ADX is a big data analytics platform that is highly optimized for log and data analytics. Since ADX uses Kusto Query Language (KQL) as its query language, it's a good alternative for Azure Sentinel data storage. Using ADX for your data storage enables you to run cross-platform queries and visualize data across both ADX and Azure Sentinel.

For more information, see the ADX documentation and blog.

When to integrate with ADX

Azure Sentinel provides full SIEM and SOAR capabilities, quick deployment and configuration, as well as advanced, built-in security features for SOC teams. However, the value of storing security data in Azure Sentinel may drop after a few months, once SOC users don't need to access it as often as they access newer data.

If you only need to access specific tables occasionally, such as for periodic investigations or audits, you may consider that retaining your data in Azure Sentinel is no longer cost-effective. At this point, we recommend storing data in ADX, which costs less, but still enables you to explore using the same KQL queries that you run in Azure Sentinel.

You can access the data in ADX directly from Azure Sentinel using the Log Analytics ADX proxy feature. To do so, use cross cluster queries in your log search or workbooks.

Important

Core SIEM capabilities, including Analytic rules, UEBA, and the investigation graph, do not support data stored in ADX.

Note

Integrating with ADX can also enable you to have control and granularity in your data. For more information, see Design considerations.

Send data directly to Azure Sentinel and ADX in parallel

You may want to retain any data with security value in Azure Sentinel to use in detections, incident investigations, threat hunting, UEBA, and so on. Keeping this data in Azure Sentinel mainly benefits Security Operations Center (SOC) users, where typically, 3-12 months of storage are enough.

You can also configure all of your data, regardless of its security value, to be sent to ADX at the same time, where you can store it for longer. While sending data to both Azure Sentinel and ADX at the same time results in some duplication, the cost savings can be significant as you reduce the retention costs in Azure Sentinel.

Tip

This option also enables you to correlate data spread across data stores, such as to enrich the security data stored in Azure Sentinel with operational or long-term data stored in ADX. For more information, see Cross-resource query Azure Data Explorer by using Azure Monitor.

The following image shows how you can retain all of your data in ADX, while sending only your security data to Azure Sentinel for daily use.

For more information about implementing this architecture option, see Azure Data Explorer monitoring.

Export data from Log Analytics into ADX

Instead of sending your data directly to ADX, you can choose to export your data from Log Analytics into ADX via an Azure Event Hub or Azure Data Factory.

Data export architecture

The following image shows a sample flow of exported data through the Azure Monitor ingestion pipeline. Your data is directed to Log Analytics by default, but you can also configure it to export to an Azure Storage Account or Event Hub.

When configuring the data export rules, select the types of logs you want to export. Once configured, new data arriving at the Log Analytics ingestion endpoint, and targeted to your workspace for the selected tables, is exported to your Storage Account or Event hub.

When configuring data for export, note the following considerations:

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Data export methods and procedures

Use one of the following procedures to export data from Azure Sentinel into ADX:

• Via an Azure Event Hub. Export data from Log Analytics into an Event Hub, where you can ingest it into ADX. This method stores some data (the first X months) in both Azure Sentinel and ADX.

• Via Azure Storage and Azure Data Factory. Export your data from Log Analytics into Azure Blob Storage, then Azure Data Factory is used to run a periodic copy job to further export the data into ADX. This method enables you to copy data from Azure Data Factory only when it nears its retention limit in Azure Sentinel / Log Analytics, avoiding duplication.

This section describes how to export Azure Sentinel data from Log Analytics into an Event Hub, where you can ingest it into ADX. Similar to sending data directly to Azure Sentinel and ADX in parallel, this method includes some data duplication as the data is streamed into ADX as it arrives in Log Analytics.

The following image shows a sample flow of exported data into an Event Hub, from where it's ingested into ADX.

The architecture shown in the previous image provides the full Azure Sentinel SIEM experience, including incident management, visual investigations, threat hunting, advanced visualizations, UEBA, and more, for data that must be accessed frequently, every X months. At the same time, this architecture also enables you to query long-term data by accessing it directly in ADX, or via Azure Sentinel thanks to the ADX proxy feature. Queries to long-term data storage in ADX can be ported without any changes from Azure Sentinel to ADX.

Note

When exporting multiple data tables into ADX via Event Hub, keep in mind that Log Analytics data export has limitations for the maximum number of Event Hubs per namespace. For more information about data export Log Analytics workspace data export in Azure Monitor.

For most customers, we recommend using the Event Hub Standard tier. Depending on the amount of tables you need to export and the amount of traffic to those tables, you may need to use Event Hub Dedicated tier. For more information, see Event Hub documentation.

Tip

For more information about this procedure, see Tutorial: Ingest and query monitoring data in Azure Data Explorer.

To export data into ADX via an Event Hub:

1. Configure the Log Analytics data export to an Event Hub. For more information, see Log Analytics workspace data export in Azure Monitor.

2. Create an ADX cluster and database. For more information, see:

3. Create target tables. The raw data is first ingested to an intermediate table, where the raw data is stored, manipulated, and expanded.

   An update policy, which is similar to a function applied to all new data, is used to ingest the expanded data into the final table, which has the same schema as the original table in Azure Sentinel.

   Set the retention on the raw table to 0 days. The data is stored only in the properly formatted table, and deleted in the raw table as soon as it's transformed.

   For more information, see Ingest and query monitoring data in Azure Data Explorer.

4. Create table mapping. Map the JSON tables to define how records land in the raw events table as they come in from an Event Hub. For more information, see Create the update policy for metric and log data.

5. Create an update policy and attach it to the raw records table. In this step, create a function, called an update policy, and attach it to the destination table so that the data is transformed at ingestion time.

   Note

   This step is required only when you want to have data tables in ADX with the same schema and format as in Azure Sentinel.

   For more information, see Connect an Event Hub to Azure Data Explorer.

6. Create a data connection between the Event Hub and the raw data table in ADX. Mendeley app for mac laptop. Configure ADX with details of how to export the data into the Event Hub.

   Use the instructions in the Azure Data Explorer documentation and specify the following details:

   • Target. Specify the specific table with the raw data.
   • Format. Specify .json as the table format.
   • Mapping to be applied. Specify the mapping table created in step 4 above.

7. Modify retention for the target table. The default Azure Data Explorer retention policy may be far longer than you need.

   Use the following command to update the retention policy to one year:

This section describes how to export Azure Sentinel data from Log Analytics into Azure Storage, where Azure Data Factory can run a regular job to export the data into ADX.

Using Azure Storage and Azure Data Factory enables you to copy data from Azure Storage only when it's close to the retention limit in Azure Sentinel / Log Analytics. There is no data duplication, and ADX is used only to access data that's older than the retention limit in Azure Sentinel.

Tip

Azure Storage Explorer Permissions

While the architecture for using Azure Storage and Azure Data Factory for your legacy data is more complex, this method can offer larger cost savings overall.

The following image shows a sample flow of exported data into an Azure Storage, from where Azure Data Factory runs a regular job to further export it into ADX.

To export data into ADX via an Azure Storage and Azure Data Factory:

1. Configure the Log Analytics data export to an Event Hub. For more information, see Log Analytics workspace data export in Azure Monitor.

2. Create an ADX cluster and database. For more information, see:

3. Create target tables. The raw data is first ingested to an intermediate table, where the raw data is stored, manipulated, and expanded.

   An update policy, which is similar to a function applied to all new data, is used to ingest the expanded data into the final table, which has the same schema as the original table in Azure Sentinel.

   Set the retention on the raw table to 0 days. The data is stored only in the properly formatted table, and deleted in the raw table as soon as it's transformed.

   For more information, see Ingest and query monitoring data in Azure Data Explorer.

4. Create table mapping. Map the JSON tables to define how records land in the raw events table as they come in from an Event Hub. For more information, see Create the update policy for metric and log data.

5. Create an update policy and attach it to the raw records table. In this step, create a function, called an update policy, and attach it to the destination table so that the data is transformed at ingestion time.

   Note

   This step is required only when you want to have data tables in ADX with the same schema and format as in Azure Sentinel.

   For more information, see Connect an Event Hub to Azure Data Explorer.

6. Create a data connection between the Event Hub and the raw data table in ADX. Configure ADX with details of how to export the data into the Event Hub.

   Use the instructions in the Azure Data Explorer documentation and specify the following details:

   • Target. Specify the specific table with the raw data.
   • Format. Specify .json as the table format.
   • Mapping to be applied. Specify the mapping table created in step 4 above.

7. Set up the Azure Data Factory pipeline:

   • Create linked services for Azure Storage and Azure Data Explorer. For more information, see:

     • Copy data to or from Azure Data Explorer by using Azure Data Factory.

   • Create a dataset from Azure Storage. For more information, see Datasets in Azure Data Factory.

   • Create a data pipeline with a copy operation, based on the LastModifiedDate properties.

     For more information, see Copy new and changed files by LastModifiedDate with Azure Data Factory.

Design considerations

When storing your Azure Sentinel data in ADX, consider the following elements:

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Next steps

Microsoft Azure Blob Storage Explorer Software

Regardless of where you store your data, continue hunting and investigating using Azure Sentinel.

Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer Download

For more information, see: