Exploring Azure Data Lake Storage
Azure Storage includes five Azure services:
- Azure Blob Storage, which is scalable storage for unstructured data
- Azure Queue Storage, which allows us to build a reliable queue of messages
- Azure Table Storage, which provides support for storing structured data
- Azure Files Storage, which is used for cloud-based file shares
- Azure Disks Storage, which provides managed storage for virtual machines disks
A data lake is a form of file storage, typically on a distributed filesystem for high-performance data access. The technologies that are commonly used to process queries against stored files and return data for reporting and analysis are Spark and Hadoop. These systems rely on a read-schema approach, which defines a tabular schema for semi-structured data files, where the data is parsed as it is read and no restrictions are applied when it is saved. Data lakes are ideal for supporting a mix of structured, semi-structured, and...
