Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect ExpertDesign data storage solutionsMedium
A logistics company processes millions of GPS coordinates from its fleet of vehicles every minute. This real-time stream of data needs to be ingested, stored, and made available for short-term analysis (up to 7 days) to track vehicle locations and identify potential delays. Long-term historical analysis is not required for this specific data stream. Which Azure data integration solution should be used to ingest this data?
- AAzure Data Lake Storage Gen2
- BAzure Data Factory
- CAzure SQL Database
- DAzure Event Hubs
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Azure Event Hubs
Azure Event Hubs is a highly scalable data streaming platform and event ingestion service that can ingest millions of events per second from connected devices and applications, making it ideal for real-time GPS coordinate streams. It provides retention for a configurable period, suitable for short-term analysis.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 is for storing large volumes of data for big data analytics, not primarily for real-time stream ingestion and short-term analysis directly.
- B. Azure Data Factory is an ETL/ELT service for orchestrating data movement and transformation, not for high-volume, real-time event ingestion.
- C. Azure SQL Database is a relational database and cannot handle the ingestion rate of millions of events per minute in real-time efficiently for stream processing.
Azure Event Hubs
A highly scalable data streaming platform and event ingestion service capable of receiving and processing millions of events per second. It acts as the 'front door' for an event pipeline.
- Designed for high-throughput, low-latency event ingestion
- Supports multiple protocols (AMQP, HTTPS, Kafka)
- Provides configurable retention for ingested events
Memory trick: Event Hubs: 'E' for 'Events' at 'E'normous scale.