8 Best Practices for Effective Data Lake Ingestion

Data Lakes have emerged as a game-changer for businesses dealing with massive amounts of data.  Yet, like with any game, preparation is the key to success. When it comes to Data Lakes, getting the most value out of your data requires proper preparation for ingestion.

In this blog post, we’ll dive into eight best practices for Data Lake ingestion that will help you get ahead of the competition.

What is Data Ingestion?

Data Ingestion is the process of collecting, importing, and processing data from various sources into a storage or computing system. This process is essential for data analysis, as it enables organizations to centralize and process vast amounts of data from diverse sources, including databases, social media platforms, IoT devices, and more. Effective data ingestion requires consideration of factors such as data quality, security, compliance, and performance monitoring. There are three types of data ingestion: real-time, batch-based, and architecture-based data ingestion.

How is Data Lake Ingestion different from Data WareHouse?

Data Lake Ingestion refers to the process of gathering and storing data in object storage, such as Hadoop, Amazon S3, or Google Cloud Storage. Unlike data warehouse ingestion, Data Lake ingestion allows for the storage of semi-structured data in its original format, without the need for manual transformation and mapping into existing database schemas. This eliminates the need for manual data wrangling and the creation of complex ELT processes. This means that Data Lakes can handle large volumes of semi-structured data types, such as image, video, and audio data.

However, while the ingestion process may be simpler in a Data Lake architecture, it is still a critical aspect that requires attention. Ingestion can occur continuously for streaming sources or periodically for batch data, and organizations must ensure that the ingestion process is efficient, accurate, and monitored for performance. Additionally, data quality controls, security, and compliance must also be considered during the ingestion process.

Why Proper Data Lake Ingestion is Essential for Success?

Data Lake Ingestion is a crucial step in ensuring the success and usefulness of your Data Lake. While the idea of “store now, analyze later” is a cornerstone of Data Lake architecture, it’s important to approach ingestion with some level of foresight. Failure to properly categorize and structure your data during ingestion can lead to a “data swamp” that is difficult to navigate and analyze.

In addition, a lack of attention to proper ingestion practices can result in performance issues and difficulties accessing the data down the line. Proper Data Lake ingestion can also involve setting up effective data governance policies, like establishing data quality standards, metadata management, and access controls. It’s essential to consider functional challenges such as optimizing storage, ensuring data accuracy, and maintaining visibility into incoming data, particularly in cases of frequent schema changes.

8 Best Practices for Data Ingestion 

• Understand Your Data

The first step in any data ingestion strategy is to understand the data that you’re ingesting. This includes understanding the structure of the data, the data sources, and the data formats. It’s essential to have a clear understanding of your data to determine the appropriate ingestion methods and ensure that the data is ingested correctly. It’s also crucial to identify any potential data quality issues, such as missing or incorrect data, which could impact the accuracy of your insights.

• Data Ingestion Planning

It’s important to have a plan in place before ingesting your data into a Data Lake. Blindly dumping your data into storage without any forethought can lead to issues down the line. It’s essential to consider the types of tools you will be using to analyze the data and how they will require the data to be stored. For instance, if you plan to run ad-hoc analytical queries on large datasets, you may want to optimize your data storage to improve query performance and reduce costs. Having a clear plan in place for your Data Lake ingestion can help ensure its success and usefulness in the long run.

• Data Partitioning

Data Ingestion can be a time-consuming process, especially when dealing with large datasets. Running a single ingestion job on a large dataset can lead to low performance and exceed the ingestion timeline, which can affect business operations and downstream processes. To improve performance, it is recommended to use data partitioning.

Data Partitioning involves breaking down a large dataset ingestion job into multiple jobs that run in parallel simultaneously. This technique helps to reduce ingestion times and improve efficiency. Data can be partitioned based on similar fields or dates, but it is essential to consider the cardinality level when partitioning fields. Fields with high cardinality levels, such as unique fields, may lead to thousands or millions of partitioning tasks, which is not efficient. It is better to partition datasets based on low cardinal fields with reduced unique values.

• Creating Data Visibility 

It’s important to have a clear idea of the data you are ingesting even before it enters your Data Lake. This means having visibility into the schema and content of your data as it is being streamed into the lake. By doing this, you can avoid the need for partial samples or “blind ETLing” to discover the schema later on, which can lead to errors or data inconsistencies.

• Lexicographic Date Format in S3 Data Ingestion

It’s essential to use a lexicographic date format, typically yyyy/mm/dd, when storing data. This format allows S3 to list files in a chronological order, making it easier to retrieve data efficiently. Using an incorrect or inconsistent date format can cause problems when accessing the data later on, making it difficult to sort and locate specific files. With a lexicographic date format, files can be easily organized and retrieved based on date, enabling faster data processing and analysis.

• Data Compression

When developing a data ingestion strategy for S3, it’s important to consider the cost implications of storing and processing large amounts of data. To reduce costs, it’s recommended that you compress your data. However, it’s important to choose the right compression format, as using too strong compression can actually increase your costs. Instead, opt for a “weaker” compression format that reads fast and lowers CPU costs, such as Snappy. By doing so, you can reduce your overall cost of ownership while still efficiently storing and processing your data on S3.

• Minimizing Number of Files

It is important to reduce the number of files in your data ingestion process to optimize query performance and minimize costs. When dealing with a large volume of data, storing each event as a separate file can lead to increased disk reads and degraded performance. This is particularly true for Kafka producers, which can generate thousands of messages per second. To avoid this, consider grouping events together in a single write or using a compaction process to reduce the number of files.

• File Formats

When storing data in your Data Lake, it is important to ensure that each file contains metadata that describes the data it contains. This is crucial for efficient analytic querying. To improve query performance, it is recommended to use columnar file formats such as Parquet or ORC. For the ETL staging layer, row-based formats like Avro or JSON can be used. By using self-describing file formats, you can simplify the data discovery process and reduce the risk of errors during data analysis.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, proper data ingestion is essential for organizations to get the most value out of their Data Lakes. Following the best practices outlined in this blog post, including understanding your data, creating a data ingestion plan, data partitioning, creating data visibility, using a lexicographic date format, compressing data, minimizing the number of files, and monitoring performance, can help organizations ensure the success and usefulness of their Data Lake. By investing time and resources into proper data ingestion, organizations can avoid creating a “data swamp” and make the most of their data to gain valuable insights and stay ahead of the competition.

Partner with Ksolves for Expert Data Lake Ingestion Solutions

At Ksolves, we take pride in being a trusted Big Data Consulting Company that specializes in delivering comprehensive Data Lake Ingestion solutions and services. Our team of experts has extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing Data Lakes for businesses of all sizes and industries.

We understand the importance of effective data ingestion and have a proven track record of delivering high-quality solutions that meet the unique needs of our clients. By choosing Ksolves as your partner for Data Lake ingestion, you can rest assured that you’re working with a team of experts who are committed to delivering results and driving your business forward.