Can ADLS be mounted in DBFS using only ADLS account key?

[Ashley1]

I realise this is not an optimal configuration but I'm trying to pull together a POC and I'm not at the point that I wish to ask the AAD admins to create an application for OAuth authentication.

I have been able to use direct references to the ADLS container but when I try to mount the container I get a java.lang.NullPointerException: authEndpoint error. While I searched I couldn't find any examples of actually mounting using just the storage account key. Is this possible and if so, how do I do it?

Regards,

Ashley

[mradassaad · Accepted solution]

Here's a helper function I use:

def mount_blob_storage(blob_uri: str, secret: str, mnt_point: str) -> str:
    """ Mount Azure Blob onto databricks.
  
    References: 
    - Mounting blob storage: https://docs.databricks.com/data/data-sources/azure/azure-storage.html
 
    Parameters
    -----------
      blob_uri: str
          uri to blob storage container
      secret: str
          blob secret key for access
      mnt_point: str
          mount point in case do not want to use name of container
 
    Return
    --------
      mnt: str
          path to mounted storage in Databricks File System
  """
    
    # Get container and account
    container, account = get_storage_account_container(blob_uri)
    
    # Define mount point
       mnt = "/mnt/{}".format(mnt_point)
    
    dbutils.fs.mount(
      source = blob_uri,
      mount_point = mnt,
      extra_configs = {
        "fs.azure.account.key.{}.blob.core.windows.net".format(account): 
        secret
  })
        
    return mnt

While the reference points to instructions to mount a blob storage account, the same method should work for ADLS.

[Ashley1]

Perfect, thanks mradassaad. It didn't work for initially as I was using 'abfss:' protocol and .dfs.core.windows.net (instead of .blob.core.windows.net) from another example. Once I changed these it worked perfectly.

[Hubert-Dudek]

The problem is that you will use it as regular blob storage in such a case. ADLS, to use all its advantages of it, require two protocols. Here I explained that (that's why two private links are required):

https://community.databricks.com/s/feed/0D53f00001eQGOHCA4

Maybe just send that manual to the admin to do that correctly. Alternatively, you can use the active directory passthrough in the premium version.

[Ashley1]

Thanks Hubert, I've bookmarked your article for future reference.

[Anonymous]

Hey there @Ashley Betts​ 

Thank you for posting your question. And you found the solution.

This is awesome!

Would you be happy to mark the answer as best so that other members can find the solution more quickly?

Cheers!