Azure Storage Account has the capability to be connected to over an Azure Private Endpoint, which means that the traffic does not go out to the internet, but traverses your existing network / Azure Express Route connection.
With this:
- data does not go out to the internet.
- response times are predictable as the traffic remains on the internal network.
- the Storage Account Public Endpoint can be closed to protect it from bad actors.
- Internal security teams are happier with this set-up.
Azure Storage Explorer installed on the same machine as Replicate is able to connect to both Public and Private Endpoints seamlessly, a change to the Proxy and a hosts files (or DNS entry) controls this. Replicate currently fails to connect to the Private Endpoint, check my support ticket for details on this.