A data lake is a centralized data repository for unstructured and semi-structured data
It is built on top of Azure Containers (Cost Efficient)
Provides file level security and a hierarchical namespace

It is meant to store vast amounts of data
Data is stored in the form of Blobs or Files
It is Apache Hadoop compatible when using the abfss driver
Supports ACL and POSIX permissions

ADLS (Gen 1)

Will be deprecated in 2024

ADLS (Gen 2)

Designed to handle big data workloads
Can handle petabytes of data and hundreds of thousands of gigabits of throughput

Added support for hierarchical namespaces
Provides ACLs, Performance Optimizes, Throttling Management, etc.

Can be accessed using wasbs (Blob Endpoint) and abfss (DFS Endpoint) drivers
They are both compatible with Azure Data Factory