Short for Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2: a standard GPv2 account with hierarchical namespace turned on, so analytics workloads get true directories and POSIX-style ACLs.
Also called Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2.
Read more: Microsoft Learn
In the Ultra Transcenders books
AZ-305AZ-104SC-500AI-300AI-103DP-900
Each book explains ADLS Gen2 in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Standard deployment type
A Foundry deployment type billed per token that keeps processing of prompts and responses inside the Azure geography of the resource, meeting data residency needs at lower volumes.
- Standard general-purpose v2
A Standard storage account covering every storage service, with access tiers and all redundancy options available.
- Hierarchical namespace
Enabling this option on a GPv2 storage account makes it ADLS Gen2, bringing directories and ACLs.
- Get
Key Vault permission on secrets that allows a single secret to be read; App Service Key Vault references need nothing beyond it.
- POSIX-style ACLs
In Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, permissions on folders and files that are set separately for the owner, the owning group and everyone else.
Related terms
- ABFS
Short for Azure Blob File System driver. Hadoop, Spark and HDInsight rely on this HDFS-compatible connector to read and write ADLS Gen2 data.
- abfss://
Secure URI scheme used to reach ADLS Gen2 data, always through the dfs endpoint (account.dfs.core.windows.net); blob endpoint addresses are not used with it.
- ACL
List of permissions set on a file or folder; examples include the POSIX-style lists in ADLS Gen2 and NTFS lists on Azure Files. Attribute conditions cannot be expressed in them.
- Azure ABAC
Attribute-based conditions added on top of Azure RBAC role assignments, such as granting access only to blobs carrying a certain index tag. Blobs (ADLS Gen2 included) and queues support them; Azure Files and Tables do not.
- Data Lake Storage Gen1
First generation of Azure Data Lake storage, which reached retirement in February 2024; ADLS Gen2 is its successor.
- Datastore
A named pointer in the workspace to Blob, Azure Files or ADLS Gen2 storage that keeps the connection details, so code never needs to carry storage keys itself.
- DBFS
Abstraction in Databricks that presents underlying storage, ADLS Gen2 for example, as a file system.
- DFS endpoint
Data Lake Storage Gen2 address in the form https://<account>.dfs.core.windows.net. Use this one, not the blob address, when creating OneLake shortcuts or setting up trusted workspace access to an ADLS Gen2 account.