A key mechanism that allows Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 to provide file system performance at object storage scale and prices is the addition of a hierarchical namespace. This allows the collection of objects/files within an account to be organized into a hierarchy of directories and nested subdirectories in the same way that the file system on your computer is organized. With a hierarchical namespace enabled, a storage account becomes capable of providing the scalability and cost-effect iveness of object storage, with file system semantics that are familiar to analytics engines and frameworks.