How to use Azure Data Share for secure data sharing

Azure Data Share is a service offered by Microsoft Azure that helps organizations to securely share data with multiple customers and partners while maintaining control and monitoring.

• Contributor Role: A specific role in Azure that permits users to manage all aspects of Azure resources.
• Azure Data Explorer: A data exploration and analytic service by Microsoft, used for querying and analyzing large volumes of data.
• Dataset Mapping: The process of linking datasets in Azure Data Explorer clusters.

Need of Azure Data Share

In the modern world, data is a valuable asset that organizations need to share securely. Current methods, such as FTP, email, and APIs, can lead to data-sharing challenges, including loss of accountability and high costs. Azure Data Share is a simpler, cost-effective, and up-to-date way to manage and monitor data sharing for timely insights.

• Traditional data-sharing methods like FTP, email, and custom APIs are complex and costly.
• Difficulty tracking data recipients leads to accountability problems.
• The need to derive timely insights from shared data.
• The requirement to specify terms of use for data sharing to ensure legal compliance.

Benefits of using Azure Data Share

• Secure Data Sharing: Azure Data Share provides a safe way to share data while allowing data providers to keep control and monitor data sharing.
• Simplified Management: It simplifies the complex task of data sharing by offering a central solution.
• Enhanced Accountability: Data providers can set terms of use, and data consumers must agree to them, ensuring accountability.
• Flexible Update Frequency: Data providers can decide how often data consumers receive updates.
• Data Enrichment: It allows easy data enrichment by combining data from third parties for better analytics and AI scenarios.
• Integration with Azure Tools: Azure Data Share smoothly works with Azure analytics tools, making data processing and analysis easier.

How Azure Data Share Works?

Azure Data Share provides snapshot-based sharing and in-place sharing options.

• Snapshot-based sharing: In snapshot-based sharing, data is transferred from the Azure subscription of the provider to the subscription of the consumer.
• In-place sharing: In in-place sharing, data is linked without duplication, enabling real-time access and immediate updates.

Steps to Share Data securely through Azure Data Share

Step 1: Deploy the Data Share Resource.

• Search for Data Shares in the search bar.
• Click Create.
• In the basics tab, fill in the required details
  • Subscription: The Azure subscription in which you wish to create the virtual network.
  • Resource Group: Choose the resource group where you wish to create the storage account. If you haven’t created one before, click “Create New”. You will be prompted to provide a name for the Resource group. Enter the name and click OK.
  • Location: Choose the location where you want to deploy the resource.
  • Name: Provide a name for the resource.
• Click on Review+Create -> Create.
  After the deployment is complete, click on Go to Resource.

Step 2: Click on Start Sharing Your Data.

Step 3: On the next screen, click on Create.

Step 4: In the Details tab, fill in the required details

• Share name: Provide a name for the share.
• Share type: Determines how your data would be shared. You can choose from Snapshot or In-share options.
• Description: Description of the datasets being shared. This description will be visible to your data consumers.
• Terms of use: Set terms for data consumers to accept when they receive the share invitation.

Click on Continue.

Step 5: On the next screen, under the Datasets tab, click Add Datasets.

Step 6: Choose the dataset type from the following options in the popup screen:

• Azure Blob Storage: Microsoft’s cloud-based object storage service.
• Azure Data Lake: A big data analytics and storage service.
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1: The first generation of Azure Data Lake storage.
• Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2: The second generation of Azure Data Lake storage.
• Azure Synapse Analytics (formerly SQL DW): An analytics service for big data and data warehousing.
• Azure Synapse Analytics (workspaces) SQL Pool: The SQL Pool component within Azure Synapse Analytics.
• Azure SQL Database: A cloud-based relational database service.

Here, we select Azure Blob Storage.

Step 7: Click on Next. Choose the Subscription(s), Resource Groups(s) and Storage Account.

Step 8: Select the dataset and click on Next. On the next screen, click on Add Datasets.

After adding the dataset, click on Continue.

Step 9: In the Recipients tab, click on Add Recipient. Enter the email address of the Recipient.

Click on the checkbox to add Share expiration date. Click on Continue.

Step 10: Enable the Snapshot Schedule by clicking the checkbox. Click on Continue.

Step 11: On the next screen, click on Create.

Troubleshoot common problems in Azure Data Share

• Azure Data Share invitations
  New users see an empty list of invitations after clicking on Accept Invitation.
  Azure Data Share service may not be registered as a resource provider in the Azure tenant. In this case, you can manually register the Data Share Service with Contributor role.
• Creating and receiving shares
  You may encounter these errors with insufficient Azure data store permissions.
  • Failed to add datasets.
  • Failed to map datasets.
  • Unable to grant Data Share resource x access to y.
  • You don’t have proper permissions to x.
  • We couldn’t add write permissions for the Azure Data Share account to one or more of your selected resources.
    You need the write permission to share or receive data from an Azure data store. This can be done with Contributor role.
• In-place sharing
  Dataset mapping can fail for Azure Data Explorer clusters due to the following reasons:
  • User lacking write permissions, often found in the Contributor role.
  • Paused source or target Azure Data Explorer clusters.
  • Incompatibility between EngineV2 and EngineV3 clusters.

Frequently Asked Questions on How to use Azure Data Share for secure data sharing

1. Where can I check if the Recipient has accepted the invitation?

Search for Data Shares.

Select the required data share.

In the left-hand menu under Data Share, click on Sent Share.

Choose the desired share.

Check the status of invitations under the Invitations tab.

2. Where can see all the running/deployed resources?

In the search box, search for All Resources. Here, you can find all active resources.

3. I can’t select Storage Account while trying to Add Datasets.

This issue may occur if you haven’t created a Storage Account in the specific Resource Group you have selected. Either choose a different Resource Group or create a storage account in the chosen Resource Group.

4. I can’t see any dataset to choose after selecting the storage account while trying to Add Datasets.

If you can’t see any datasets, you may not have uploaded the dataset in the storage account.

Go to your storage account.

Click Upload.

Browse for the dataset you want to upload.

Select the container where you want to upload the dataset.

Click Upload.