SQL – Use of WITH CREDENTIAL syntax is not valid for credentials containing a Shared Access Signature

Overview

Recently I wanted to create a SQL Backup Maintenance plan that would backup to an Azure storage blob container. After completing the GUI the backup step would not complete, instead I got the error “Use of WITH CREDENTIAL syntax is not valid for credentials containing a Shared Access Signature”

Solution

The solution is to clear the “CredentialName” property for the step after creating it.

Step 1

Setup your backup step setting the destination as URL on the General tab and complete the following fields on the Destination tab.

Step 2

Right-click your backup task and select properties.

Step 3

In the Misc section of properties pane clear the contents of the field “CredentialName”

Step 4

Save and test your maintenance plan.

1 thought on “SQL – Use of WITH CREDENTIAL syntax is not valid for credentials containing a Shared Access Signature”

This doesn’t work on SQL 2016. After clearing the credential field, the job just sets the URL field to “…”, which results in the following error: “Invalid zero-length device name. Reissue the BACKUP statement with a valid device name. BACKUP DATABASE is terminating abnormally.”. I’ll stick to using scripts for the Maintenance Plan backup to URL for now.