Scalable Data Lakes for Machine Learning with Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

To create a scalable data lake for machine learning on Azure, you would typically use Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, which is a large-scale data storage solution for big data analytics. It combines the capabilities of Azure Blob storage and Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1, providing a hierarchical file system as well as the benefits of Azure Blob storage, such as low-cost, tiered storage, high availability/disaster recovery capabilities.

Here's a Pulumi program in Python that will create an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account, a filesystem within it, and configure it for your machine learning needs:

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_azure_native as azure_native

# Create an Azure Resource Group
resource_group = azure_native.resources.ResourceGroup('resource_group')

# Create an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account
storage_account = azure_native.storage.StorageAccount('storage_account',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    kind='StorageV2', # The storage account must be "StorageV2" for Data Lake Storage Gen2
    sku=azure_native.storage.SkuArgs(name='Standard_LRS'), # Here 'LRS' stands for Locally-redundant storage
    location=resource_group.location,
    is_hns_enabled=True) # Important: HNS must be enabled for Data Lake Storage Gen2

# Create a filesystem in the storage account
data_lake_filesystem = azure_native.storage.BlobContainer('data_lake_filesystem',
    resource_group_name=resource_group.name,
    account_name=storage_account.name)

# Export the URL of the storage account to access it later
pulumi.export('storage_account_url', storage_account.primary_endpoints.apply(lambda endpoints: endpoints.web))
```

Let's break down what each component in the above code does:

- **ResourceGroup**: In Azure, a resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. Here, we've created a resource group to logically group our data lake resources.

- **StorageAccount**: This is the account within which your data lake resides. For Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, we specify the kind as "StorageV2" and enable the Hierarchical Namespace (HNS) by setting `is_hns_enabled` to `True`.

- **BlobContainer**: This represents a filesystem within the data lake storage account. You can create multiple filesystems within a single storage account, each with its access control lists and other properties.

By running the above Pulumi program, it will provision the necessary Azure resources to create a scalable data lake ready for machine learning processing. The resources will be provisioned in such a way that they conform to the best practices for integration with Azure services for analytics and machine learning.

After deployment, you can start ingesting data into the Data Lake, organize it into folders and hierarchies as required by your application, and set up additional services such as Azure Databricks, Azure Machine Learning, or Azure Synapse Analytics to process and analyze the data.