Ayman El-Ghazali talks Polybase:
HDFS is a distributed file system that works differently than what we’re used to in the Windows OS side of things; the general principle is to use cheap commodity hardware that replicates data in order to account for availability and to prevent loss of data. With that in mind, it makes a great use case to store a lot of data cheaply for archiving purposes or can be used to store large quantities of data that been to be processed in large quantities as well.
For more information please visit: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt143171.aspx
Now if you want to try it out for yourself, make sure you install the PolyBase Engine (from the SQL Server setup) and feel free to try the modified code sample below.
Polybase is, without a doubt, my favorite SQL Server 2016 feature. I am excited to put this through its paces in a production environment.