DP-203 Practice Question: Secure, monitor, and optimize data storage and data processing
Which THREE best practices should be followed when designing a data lake in Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for optimal performance?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use Parquet file format for analytics workloads.
Options C, D, and E are correct. Parquet format is columnar and provides efficient compression and query performance. Partitioning by date allows partition elimination, reducing data scanned. A naming convention that avoids special characters and high cardinality prevents throttling and improves parallelism. Option A is incorrect because disabling hierarchical namespace is not a best practice; hierarchical namespace enables folder-level security and is required for ADLS Gen2. Option B is incorrect because a deep directory structure can cause performance issues due to metadata overhead; a flat or shallow structure is recommended.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Disable hierarchical namespace to improve performance.
Why it's wrong here
Hierarchical namespace is a key feature of ADLS Gen2; disabling it would prevent folder operations.
- ✗
Use a deep directory structure with many subfolders.
Why it's wrong here
Deep directory structures can cause performance overhead and throttling.
- ✓
Use Parquet file format for analytics workloads.
Why this is correct
Parquet is columnar and efficient for analytics.
- ✓
Use a naming convention that avoids special characters and high cardinality.
Why this is correct
Avoiding high cardinality directories reduces the number of requests and prevents throttling.
- ✓
Partition data by date to enable partition elimination.
Why this is correct
Partitioning by date reduces the amount of data scanned.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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