Azure Data Lake: Navigating the Waters

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Azure Data Lake is an industry-leading platform in the massive pool of data solutions. Developed by Microsoft Azure, it offers your organization a platform for storing, processing, and analyzing data at scale, depending on what your needs may be. Modern data management has become more complex, and Azure Data Lake is a tool that can be mismanaged. Check out our blog on what Azure Data Lake is and who can benefit the most from the platform.

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What is Azure Data Lake?

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Azure Data Lake is a cloud-based and analytical storage platform. As a storage platform, it hosts your organization's structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Utilizing scalable cloud infrastructure, Azure Data Lake presents a unified approach for a data storage platform and seamlessly integrates various analytical services within the Azure landscape. 

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Azure Data Lake consists of two key areas;

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1. Azure Data Lake Storage (ADLS): ADLS is a data storage platform optimized for analytical workloads and big data sets. Your organization can store petabytes of data in its native format, which includes various file types and any size you demand. Additionally, ADLS is a secure platform that supports parallel data processing, ensuring an expedited data ingestion and retrieval process.

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2. Azure Data Lake Analytics (ADLA): ADLA is a distributed analytical offering built on top of Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark. Organizations can now run big data analytics in coordination with processing jobs on data stored in Azure Data Lake Storage without manual infrastructure management. ADLA provides a serverless environment where users can execute queries with familiar languages SQL, U-SQL, or Spark.

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What Does Azure Data Lake Do?

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Due to its complex nature, we often see Azure Data Lake built improperly. Here are several benefits Azure Data Lake offers and reasons why it can be perceived as complex;

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1. Scalable Storage: With Azure Data Lake Storage, organizations can store vast volumes of data without worrying about storage constraints. Thanks to hierarchical namespace and object storage architecture, you are assured an efficient data organization process. However, this amount of data requires a deep understanding of data partitioning, optimization skills, and distribution, which is not held by most Managed Services Providers. That’s where DataStrike differentiates itself as an MSP!

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2. Centralized Data Repository: Azure Data Lake is a centralized interface consisting of unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data. It also effectively eliminates data silos.

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3. Advanced Analytics: Organizations can leverage ADLA to perform thorough analytical and processing tasks such as batch processing, interactive querying, and real-time analytics. 

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4. Integration with Azure Services: Azure Data Lake ensures a smooth integration process with other key Azure projects, such as Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks, Azure Machine Learning, and Power BI. This integration enables organizations to build systematic end-to-end data pipelines with a combination of Azure’s top services. While these integrations are powerful, they can add a layer of complexity regarding troubleshooting and configuration, an area DataStrike Data Engineers flourish in. 

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5. Security and Compliance: Azure Data Lake also has a distinctive set of core security offerings, including role-based access control (RBAC), Azure Active Directory integration, and encryption at rest and in transit, in coordination with auditing services. This ensures organizations have top-of-the-line data privacy while remaining compliant and realizing mitigated system security risks. 

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6. Cost Efficiency: With Azure Data Lake, organizations can reduce expenditures thanks to a pay-as-you-go pricing model. Your organization will only pay for the storage and computing resources you consume, and there’s no need for upfront infrastructure investment or maintenance. However, if you need a large-scale deployment, it can be difficult to continuously monitor and maintain your systems. That’s not a problem for DataStrike, as we are the only true data-driven on-shore MSP in the country.

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Who Could Benefit from Azure Data Lake?

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Azure Data Lake is well-suited for organizations across various industries;

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1. Enterprises: Large enterprises dealing with vast data volumes from various sources will benefit from Azure Data Lake's scalability. With data assets being consolidated, organizations can use predictive measures to forecast advanced analytics.

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2. Data-Driven Organizations: Organizations emphasizing a data-driven decision-making approach will benefit from Azure Data Lake. Whether it's analyzing customer behavior, optimizing operations, or providing predictive measures for market trends, Azure Data Lake provides the tools and capabilities to extract actionable insights from data.

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3. Data Engineers and Analysts: Data Engineers and analysts can leverage Azure Data Lake to build and deploy robust pipelines. Our Data Engineers are adept at building out data-driven pipelines and will assist your deployment and configuration processes. Working in unison with common programming languages and familiar frameworks can simplify the development process, but there are more unique data formats like U-SQL, Apache Spark, and Azure Data Lake Analytics, which require a nuanced viewpoint that many MSPS do not offer, unlike DataStrike. 

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4. Research Institutions: Academic and research institutions dealing with large-scale data analysis can utilize Azure Data Lake to streamline their institutional workflows. It provides the computational power and necessary storage capacity required to process and analyze vast datasets, thereby accelerating discoveries and academic ambitions. 

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5. Startups and SMBs: Startups and small to medium-sized businesses can all benefit from Azure Data Lake thanks to its cost-friendly pricing model. It allows them to scale their data infrastructure as their business grows and compete with larger enterprises on data analytics capabilities.

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In Conclusion…

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Azure Data Lake is an effective solution for organizations wanting to unlock their data’s potential. Whether it's storing vast data sets, executing complex analytics, or building robust data-driven pipelines, Azure Data Lake has the tools to spark innovation. DataStrike will help you get the most out of your Azure Data Lake experience thanks to our expert deployment and implementation processes combined with best-in-class 24x7x365 monitoring and maintenance capabilities.

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About DataStrike

As a specialized database and infrastructure Managed Services Provider (MSP), DataStrike works with companies across various industries to systematically optimize their data infrastructure investment leverage. Thanks to our expert experience gained from cultivating relationships via client engagements, we can provide your business with best practices that will ensure maximum database performance and a stable foundation. DataStrike provides assurance to all clients we service that their database systems are covered from here on out. DataStrike works to provide services for platforms such as SQL Server and Oracle; cloud environments for AWS, Azure, and OCI; and open-source databases like MariaDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. 

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