Azure Data Lake Gen2

A high-performance data lake built on Azure Blob Storage that combines a hierarchical namespace with massive scalability for big data analytics.

Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS) Gen2 converges the capabilities of ADLS Gen1 with the cost-effective foundation of Azure Blob Storage. It utilizes a hierarchical namespace (HNS) to organize data into folders and nested directories: a critical feature that optimizes file-level security and improves performance for analytics engines like Apache Spark and Azure Databricks. By supporting the ABFS driver and POSIX-compliant access control lists (ACLs), Gen2 provides a secure, globally available repository capable of handling exabytes of information. This architecture eliminates data silos and accelerates time-to-insight for complex ETL workloads and large-scale machine learning projects.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/storage/data-lake-storage/