A textbook definition of data lake describes it as a vault for storing humongous amounts of data. This data does not have to be necessarily structured; one can store all types of structured and unstructured data in a data lake. Given the absurd amounts of data, mankind generates every day, it ought to come as no surprise that there has been a massive surge in the demand for data lakes all over the world from companies across the spectrum of industries. Yet, there is one name that consistently fares among the top choices in the market: Azure Data Lake.
A Microsoft offering, Azure Data Lake is quite simply a collection of data services available offered under the purview of Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) is referred to as a fully managed, elastic, scalable & secure file system that supports Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) semantics and works with the Apache Hadoop ecosystem. This provides industry-standard reliability, enterprise-grade security and unlimited storage that meets the storage needs for a large variety of data. It is built for running large-scale analytics systems that require robust computing capacity to process and analyze a chunk of data. A Microsoft offering, Azure Data Lake is quite simply a collection of data services available offered under the purview of Microsoft Azure. The goal of ADL services is to empower companies to not simply store their data of all types and sizes but also analyze and properly manage said data. Usually, the data stored in ADLS can be easily analyzed using Hadoop frameworks like MapReduce and Hive.
Now allow us to now walk you through some of the key benefits of the latter.
- Bring together data in one place: Decidedly one of Azure Data Lake’s biggest benefits is that it enables companies to consolidate all their siloed big data, from a variety of sources across all sources and environments, into one place. From this platform, companies are then able to not only keep an eye on but also manage all their stored data without needing to move back and forth between disparate systems.
- Security: Since Azure Data Lake is a solution that is completely supported and managed by Microsoft, one can rest assured that Azure is protected by a wide array of modern security provisions such as an enterprise-grade SLA. Data Lake also safeguards data while it is in motion by the means of SSL encryption. ADL protects the data at rest via either user- or service-managed HSM-supported keys stored in the Azure Key Vault.
- Cost-effective: Yet another USP of the Azure Data Lake is that it is a highly cost-effective tool capable of running huge data workloads. When processing data, ADL also offers companies the option to select either a pay-per-job model or on-demand clusters. Anyway, no matter which one of these two options you choose, you will not need licenses, service support agreements, or even hardware. Furthermore, the system can be quickly scaled following the business’ requirements to ensure the company only pays for what it needs.
- Affordable storage: One more thing Azure is known for is that it offers a highly affordable storage solution for organizations. Azure storage enables cost-effective data storage and fortifies such storage with additional functionalities such as life-cycle management, archive storage, and migration from hot storage to colder storage among other things.
Thanks to its many, many benefits, Azure Data Lake has proven to be a handy resource for a variety of companies and organizations across the broad spectrum of industries. It enables data warehousing, is conducive to the use of hybrid cloud computing systems, and brings Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to the table as well. So, if you too want to put this robust solution to work for your business as well, it would be advisable to start looking for a trusted vendor for Azure cloud consulting services. Their expertise will go a long way in ensuring the success of your endeavors.
