Starts the Azure Storage Emulator if it is not running. Useful for running unit tests on a build server.

StartAzureStorageEmulator.cs

private async Task StartAzureStorageEmulator()
{
    if (!Settings.Default.StartAzureStorageEmulator)
        return;

    try
    {
        var storageAccount = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(Settings.Default.AzureStorageConnectionString);
        var blobClient = storageAccount.CreateCloudBlobClient();
        var container = blobClient.GetContainerReference("test");
        var context = new OperationContext();
        var options = new BlobRequestOptions
        {
            RetryPolicy = new NoRetry(),
            ServerTimeout = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(1)
        };

        await container.ExistsAsync(options, context);
    }
    catch (StorageException)
    {
        var processStartInfo = new ProcessStartInfo
        {
            FileName = @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Azure\Storage Emulator\WAStorageEmulator.exe",
            Arguments = @"start",
        };

        using (var process = Process.Start(processStartInfo))
        {
            process.WaitForExit();
        }
    }
}

Thanks for the code.