Unclear/Overlapping Variable Responsibility for Azure Storage

[visimo-jarod]

Recently I was debugging an issue where I was unable to access a storage account in Azure. The problem started with me setting the account name, key, and container as normal and getting an error:

azure.common.AzureException: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='***.blob.core.windows.net', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /media/tools/None/logo/app/main/data_load/jupyter_lab.png?timeout=20 (Caused by NewConnectionError('<urllib3.connection.HTTPSConnection object at 0x7f518e827c90>: Failed to establish a new connection: [Errno -2] Name or service not known'))

I read into the error, and noticed that my domain ended with .blob.core.windows.net and immediately realized my error: my storage account was not in azure's default cloud, so the default domain was timing out. I went to the docs and seeing as I needed the domain to change I went to the settings page, CTRL+F'd and searched for "domain" which led me to the variable AZURE_CUSTOM_DOMAIN. The example says:

The custom domain to use. This can be set in the Azure Portal. For example, www.mydomain.com or mycdn.azureedge.net.

It may contain a host:port when using the emulator (AZURE_EMULATED_MODE = True).

This seemed like the solution to my problem: I am not using the default cloud, the default connection string is timing out, this variable changes the domain, we should be good to go... This was not the answer however as there is another variable that needed to be set: AZURE_ENDPOINT_SUFFIX. Though this is listed in the docs, it seems strange (from an outsider's perspective) to have both of these variables. The docs say:

The host base component of the url, minus the account name. Defaults to Azure (core.windows.net). Override this to use the China cloud (core.chinacloudapi.cn).

I understand that just changing the cloud makes sense, but if I am setting the custom_domain, why would I also need to change the cloud suffix? Is there a reason that these two variables are distinct? Could the docs be updated to explain that difference?

Thank you for your time.

[jschneier]

This has been resolved via the update in #805.