Azure Data Lake for Structured Data

Question

We've been reviewing the Modern Data Warehouse architectures from Microsoft (link here), which references using Azure Data Factory to pull structured and unstructured data into the Azure Data Lake. I've attended a lot of presentations on the subject as well, but most people are split on whether the Data Lake is a good home for structured data. What I am trying to determine is if importing data into the Data Lake is a good strategy if the only source we will be utilizing is on-prem SQL Server databases? And, what would be the advantage / disadvantages of that strategy?

For context sake, we're looking for a single pane of glass for consumption - whether it's end user's reporting with Power BI, or fodder for Azure Data Warehouse / on-prem Data Warehouse. We want one container that is the source for all of these systems, which is not the source OLTP system (i.e. OLTP database --> (Azure Data Factory) --> Data Lake --> everything else).

I appreciate any guidance on the subject. Thank you.

Answer 1

You have not mentioned the data size and I think for moving to ADL , the data is a very strong parameter . In your case the data is very much structured . If you we had unstructured & massive data and if you wanted to use ADB or Hadoop or any other technology to process it later , i think ADL is a good candidate .

You should also consider that the data is encrypted in motion using SSL .You can authorize users and groups with fine-grained POSIX-based ACLs for all data in the Store enabling role-based access controls .