Running multiple instances of AzCopy.exe command

AzCopy.exe is really an amazing tool for data transfer. But if we run multiple instances of AzCopy we may get below error.

AzCopy Command - AzCopy /Source:c:\temp\source /Dest:https://<storage account>.blob.core.windows.net/test /DestSAS:"<SAS>" /pattern:"" /s

An error occurred while reading the restart journal from "C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Azure\AzCopy". Detailed error: The process cannot access the file 'C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Azure\AzCopy\AzCopyCheckpoint.jnl' because it is being used by another process.

The error is pretty much clear. AzCopy keeps a journal file for resume functionality and if we don't specify the journal file location in command it uses default location and when second AzCopy starts it cannot read journal file.

The fix is to specify the location for .jnl. AzCopy Command goes as follows
AzCopy /Source:c:\temp\source /Dest:https://<storage account>.blob.core.windows.net/test /DestSAS:"<SAS>" /pattern:"" /s /z:<unique folder for azcopy command>

If we are running AzCopy from the command window it is easy to find out. But, if AzCopy is invoked from applications (PowerShell or .Net) in parallel it is difficult to find out because we might have disabled all the messages using /y. AzCopy has /v: switch which redirect the logs to a file. That will help to troubleshoot.