Migrating Azure Data Factory and Synapse Pipelines to Fabric Data Factory

Migrating data pipelines from Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Azure Synapse Pipelines to Microsoft Fabric Data Factory represents a significant modernization opportunity and a catalyst for accelerating AI innovation across the enterprise. With Fabric Data Factory, customers can unify their data estate, streamline data engineering workflows, and more effectively leverage real-time analytics, generative AI, and machine learning at scale.

This article outlines the key technical considerations for a successful migration from ADF/Synapse pipelines to Fabric Data Factory.

Fabric Data Factory vs. ADF and Synapse Pipelines: What’s Different?

Fabric Data Factory is officially described by Microsoft as the next generation of Azure Data Factory, built to handle your most complex data integration challenges with a simpler, more powerful approach. It retains ADF’s core engine capabilities while introducing major improvements enabled by Fabric’s unified, AI-centric platform including OneLake, expanded activities and native Copilot experiences.

A fundamental shift is the move to a fully managed SaaS model, with several important differences:

• No infrastructure management: Fabric eliminates Azure Integration Runtimes entirely. Compute is managed automatically within a Fabric capacity. For on‑premises connectivity, the On‑Premises Data Gateway (OPDG) replaces ADF’s Self‑Hosted Integration Runtime.
• No publish step: Pipelines are authored directly in the Fabric portal and can be saved or executed immediately, removing the separate publish step required in ADF.
• Simplified data connections: Traditional Linked Services and Datasets are replaced by Connections and inline data properties within activities, reducing configuration complexity.
• New native activities: Fabric introduces capabilities not available in ADF/Synapse pipelines, including Office 365 Outlook email, Teams messaging, semantic model refresh, Fabric notebooks, Invoke SSIS (preview), and Lakehouse maintenance (preview).
• Enhanced CI/CD: Built‑in deployment pipelines support cherry‑picking, individual item promotion, Git integration, and SaaS‑native CI/CD beyond ADF’s ARM template–based approach.
• AI Copilot: Fabric Data Factory includes Copilot to assist with pipeline creation and management, a capability not available in ADF or Synapse pipelines.

For more details see: Differences between Data Factory in Fabric and Azure - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

Common Migration Challenges and Recommended Mitigations

Migrating to Fabric Data Factory introduces new choices and challenges. While the move to Fabric offers substantial benefits, success depends on understanding key differences, migration challenges and planning accordingly. The table below summarizes the most important considerations to help guide a smooth and successful transition.

Migration Tooling

• Migration Assistant: Microsoft Fabric includes a built‑in Migration Assistant for both ADF and Synapse pipelines, designed specifically to support pipeline migrations. To assess migration readiness, open your ADF/Synapse pipeline instance, go to the authoring canvas, and select Migrate to Fabric (Preview) > Get started (Preview).

As shown in the assessment summary below, pipelines are grouped into migration readiness categories such as Ready, Needs Review, Coming Soon, and Unsupported. This classification gives engineering teams early visibility into potential migration risks by highlighting activities or configurations that may behave differently in Fabric and require validation or adjustment after migration (Needs review), features that are not currently supported in Fabric but are planned for future availability (Coming soon), or not available in Fabric and will require redesign or re‑implementation (Unsupported).

In enterprise environments with large pipeline estates, this insight is critical for avoiding unexpected failures or delays during migration.

After completing the assessment, you can proceed with the migration wizard and mount your ADF pipelines into Microsoft Fabric.

Mounting does not migrate your ADF pipelines to Fabric Data Factory at this stage. Instead, it creates a reference to your existing instances within the Fabric workspace without consuming Fabric capacity. After mounting, run pipelines side by side to validate behavior and results.

Once the side by side has been validated, select Migrate to Fabric button to proceed with connection mapping and the actual migration to Fabric Data Factory.

After completing the migration process, you will be presented with the Migration Results page. This view provides a summary of all selected pipeline resources along with their migration status and corresponding Fabric resource names. Successfully migrated pipelines are now available as Fabric‑native items within the workspace, while any errors or unmapped dependencies are flagged for further review.

For Synapse Analytics pipelines, you transition directly into the Fabric Data Factory experience (assess->map->migrate flow) rather than mounting first to reference Synapse pipelines externally. 

For detailed migration steps, follow this link: Assess your Azure Data Factory and Synapse pipelines for migration to Fabric - Azure Data Factory | Microsoft Learn 

• PowerShell automation tool: Microsoft provides a PowerShell upgrade utility to accelerate migration from Azure Data Factory to Fabric Data Factory. Using the Microsoft.FabricPipelineUpgrade module, you can translate a large subset of ADF pipeline JSON into Fabric‑native definitions, giving you a fast, scalable starting point for migration. The tool covers common patterns such as Copy, Lookup, Stored Procedure, and standard control flow. Manual follow‑up is still required for edge cases (custom connectors, complex expressions, and some data flow scenarios).

Import-AdfFactory -SubscriptionId <your Subscription ID> -ResourceGroupName <your Resource Group Name> -FactoryName <your Data Factory Name> -PipelineName "pipeline1" -AdfToken $adfSecureToken | ConvertTo-FabricResources | Export-FabricResources -Region <region> -Workspace <workspaceId> -Token $fabricSecureToken

For step‑by‑step guidance, see: Detailed Tutorial for PowerShell-based Migration of Azure Data Factory Pipelines to Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 

Open‑Source Migration Tooling

In addition to Microsoft‑supported migration utilities, the Fabric Toolbox provides a set of open‑source tools designed to assist with migration planning, readiness analysis, and pipeline translation from ADF and Synapse to Fabric Data Factory.

• Fabric Data Factory Migration Assistant PowerShell: An open‑source tool from the Fabric Toolbox that supports migration from both Azure Data Factory and Synapse ARM templates and built as a browser‑based single‑page application (SPA). https://github.com/microsoft/fabric-toolbox/tree/main/tools/FabricDataFactoryMigrationAssistant 
• Fabric Assessment Tool: An open‑source command‑line utility used to connect to and scan workspaces in order to extract inventory data and assess migration scope by creating a structured export of assets for planning and analysis. 
  https://github.com/microsoft/fabric-toolbox/tree/main/tools/fabric-assessment-tool 

When to Use What?

Organizations typically adopt one of three migration strategies when transitioning ADF or Synapse pipelines to Fabric Data Factory:

• Lift‑and‑Shift to accelerate transition timelines with minimal pipeline refactoring.
• Modernization to re‑architect orchestration logic and fully leverage Fabric‑native analytics and AI capabilities.
• Hybrid to balance migration velocity with targeted modernization of high‑value or low‑parity workloads.

The appropriate migration paths should be aligned with business priorities, existing integration patterns, and the desired pace of platform transformation, and is largely determined by the feature parity between existing ADF/Synapse assets and their Fabric Data Factory equivalents.

A range of migration tooling options are available depending on migration scope and pipeline complexity:

• Built-In Fabric UI Assistant – Migrate to Fabric: Use this assistant to assess pipeline readiness across both ADF and Synapse environments, mount existing ADF pipelines into a Fabric workspace, perform side‑by‑side validation, or migrate supported Synapse pipelines directly into Fabric Data Factory experience.
• PowerShell Upgrade Tool (Microsoft‑supported): Use this for bulk ADF migrations at scale, repeatable upgrades, and CI/CD‑driven pipeline conversion with a supported path.
• Fabric Data Factory Migration Assistant PowerShell (Open Source): Use for early analysis, connector mapping, and generating a migration starting point outside the Fabric UI.
• Fabric Assessment Tool (Open Source): Use before migration to understand scope, inventory, dependencies, and readiness across your Fabric and data estate.
• Manual migration: best suited for complex, low‑parity pipelines and provides an opportunity to modernize architecture using Fabric’s native capabilities, delivering long‑term benefits in maintainability, performance, and cost.

Key Considerations for a Smooth Transition

• Before migrating, it’s important to understand the architectural differences between Azure Data Factory or Synapse pipelines and Fabric Data Factory.  Reviewing these differences early helps determine which pipeline components can be reused, translated, or redesigned for Fabric‑native execution. 
• Start by prioritizing low‑risk, high‑parity pipelines that can be migrated with minimal redesign.
• Mounting existing ADF pipelines into Fabric enables gradual migration and side‑by‑side testing, allowing teams to validate compatibility before using conversion tools or replatforming workloads.
• For larger environments, the Microsoft.FabricPipelineUpgrade PowerShell module or Open-Source tools can be used to migrate pipelines at scale while mapping linked services to Fabric connections.
• Where possible, leverage Fabric‑native capabilities such as Copilot for pipeline authoring, and code fix, deployment pipelines for CI/CD, and OneLake shortcuts to access external data without duplication.
• It’s also recommended to validate migrated pipelines under production‑like workloads to confirm performance and reliability before cutover.
• For complex or large‑scale enterprise migrations, engaging Microsoft partners can help accelerate modernization efforts while minimizing operational risk. Partners | Microsoft Fabric

For detailed best practices guidance, refer to: Migration Best Practices for Azure Data Factory to Fabric Data Factory - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 

Summary

Migrating from Azure Data Factory or Synapse pipelines to Microsoft Fabric Data Factory represents a key step toward building a unified, AI‑ready analytics platform. By leveraging the built‑in migration assessment and associated tooling, organizations can perform pipeline‑level compatibility analysis, identify unsupported activities or configuration dependencies, and implement a phased modernization strategy aligned with workload readiness.

Successful transitions require a clear understanding of the architectural shift from ADF/Synapse’s PaaS to Fabric’s SaaS‑managed model, where compute is fully managed within the Fabric capacity, traditional Integration Runtimes are no longer required, and datasets and linked services are replaced with connection‑based configurations defined inline within pipeline activities.

By adopting Fabric‑native capabilities such as deployment pipelines for CI/CD, Copilot‑assisted pipeline authoring, and OneLake, organizations can standardize pipeline lifecycle management, enable governed access to shared data assets across domains, and support multi‑cloud integration through virtualized data access allowing pipelines to operate on distributed datasets without duplicating or relocating data across Lakehouse, Data Warehouse, and Real‑Time Analytics workloads within a unified Fabric workspace.