Azure Data Lake Offers Enhanced Storage Option

• A Data Lake Storage “Gen 2” option uses Azure Storage Blobs for better scale, performance, replication, and integration with other Azure services.
• Data Lake Analytics is not connected to Gen 2, and its future is unclear.

Updates to Azure Data Lake introduce a storage option that leverages Azure Storage Blobs features and opens Data Lake to a wider range of applications.

Service Overview

A data lake stores vast amounts of unprocessed data (often called Big Data) in its native format until it is needed. Data lakes are often repositories for high-speed streaming data, such as logs and machine sensor data. A typical data lake is optimized to receive data without significant preprocessing and to rely on other tools to query, sort, and analyze the data. A popular solution for data lakes is Hadoop, an Apache open-source software framework and Microsoft’s preferred Big Data solution.

Although Hadoop is popular, on-premises implementations can be expensive and are difficult to scale and manage. Data Lake simplifies some of the complexities by providing petabyte-level storage and high-performance computing as a Microsoft-managed service. Customers still create the data architecture of the data lake and build appropriate queries and applications.