On June 27th, Microsoft announced the Public Preview of Azure Data Lake Store Gen2. It's more powerful and now equipped with many features that Gen1 didn't have. This is thanks to the full integration with Blob storage now.
From Microsoft's own words in the announcement, here is what is Data Lake Store Gen2:
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 offers a no-compromise data lake. It unifies the core capabilities from the first generation of Azure Data Lake with a Hadoop compatible file system endpoint now directly integrated into Azure Blob Storage. This enhancement combines the scale and cost benefits of object storage with the reliability and performance typically associated only with on-premises file systems. This new file system includes a full hierarchical namespace that makes files and folders first class citizens, translating to faster, more reliable analytic job execution.
Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 also includes limitless storage ensuring capacity to meet the needs of even the largest, most complex workloads. In addition, Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 will deliver on native integration with Azure Active Directory and support POSIX compliant ACLs to enable granular permission assignments on files and folders.
As Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is fully integrated with Blob storage, customers can access data through the new file system-oriented APIs or the object store APIs from Blob Storage. Customers also have all the benefits of Azure Blob Storage including encryption at rest, object level tiering and lifecycle policies as well as HA/DR capabilities such as ZRS and GRS. All of this will come at a lower cost and lower overall TCO for customers’ analytics projects! Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is the most comprehensive data lake available anywhere.
I'm digging up more information on Gen2 and preparing to draft an in-depth article on its pros and cons; but for those who are interested, here you can watch the video on Youtube or use the resource links below: