Tableau to Power BI Migration: Semantic Layer-First Approach for Cloud Architects
Author's: Lavanya Sreedhar LavanyaSreedhar, Peter Lo PeterLo, Aryan Anmol aryananmol and Rafia Aqil Rafia_Aqil In this guide, we provide practical guidance for migrating from Tableau to Power BI, with a focus on technical best practices and architecture. Unifying business intelligence on the Microsoft Fabric platform, enterprises gain closer integration with Microsoft 365 (Teams, Copilot, Excel). For cloud solution architects and BI developers, a successful migration is not just about rebuilding dashboards in a new tool. It requires thoughtful architectural planning and a shift to a more model-centric approach to BI. Why Semantic Layer-First Architecture Matters The Traditional Migration Challenge Most Tableau to Power BI migrations follow a dashboard-centric approach: teams attempt to replicate existing Tableau workbooks, calculated fields, and LOD (Level of Detail) expressions directly into Power BI reports. While this may seem efficient initially, it creates significant downstream challenges: Duplicated logic: Each report embeds its own calculations and business rules, leading to conflicting KPIs across the organization Maintenance overhead: Changes to business logic require updating dozens or hundreds of individual reports Governance gaps: Without centralized definitions, semantic drift occurs—different teams calculate "Revenue" or "Active Customer" differently Scalability issues: As data volumes grow, report-level transformations become performance bottlenecks The Semantic Layer-First Alternative Microsoft's recommended approach centers on semantic models (formerly called datasets)—centralized, governed data models that separate business logic from visualization. In this architecture: The payoff is substantial: when data evolves or business rules change, you update the semantic model once, and all dependent reports automatically reflect the changes—no manual redesign required. Understanding Migration Complexity: Simple to Very Complex Dashboards Not all Tableau dashboards are created equal. The migration strategy should align with dashboard complexity, and the semantic layer approach becomes increasingly valuable as complexity grows. Follow a Step-by-Step Migration Strategy Migrating from Tableau to Power BI is not a one-click effort – it requires a mix of automated and manual refactoring, plus a sound change management plan. Below are key strategies and best practices for a successful migration: Audit your Tableau estate: Start by taking inventory of all existing Tableau workbooks, data sources, and dashboards. Determine what needs to be migrated (focus on high-value, widely used reports first) and identify any redundant or obsolete content that can be retired rather than converted. Conduct a proof-of-concept (PoC): Before migrating everything, pick a representative complex dashboard (or a subset of your data) and perform a pilot migration. This will help you validate that Power BI can connect to your data (e.g. setting up the Power BI gateways for on-premises sources), test performance (Import vs DirectQuery modes), and experiment with replicating key visuals or calculations. Use the PoC to uncover any surprises early – for example, test that any Level of Detail expressions or table calculations in Tableau can be re-created in DAX. The lessons learned here should inform your overall project plan. Use a phased migration approach: Plan to run Tableau and Power BI in parallel for some period, rather than switching everything at once. Migrate in waves – for example, by business unit or subject area – and incorporate user feedback as you go. This phased approach reduces risk and allows your team to improve the process with each iteration. It also gives end users time to adjust gradually. Migrate high-impact dashboards first: Prioritize the migration of key reports and dashboards that are critical to the business or have the most usage. Delivering these early wins will not only surface any technical challenges to solve but will also help demonstrate the value of Power BI’s capabilities to stakeholders. Early success builds buy-in and momentum for the rest of the migration. Reimagine (don’t just replicate) the experience: It’s rarely possible – or desirable – to exactly re-create every Tableau visualization pixel-for-pixel in Power BI. Embrace the opportunity to focus on business questions and improve user experience with Power BI’s features. For example, rather than replicating a complex Tableau workaround, you might implement a cleaner solution in Power BI using native features (like bookmarks, drilldowns, or simpler navigation between pages). Engage business users and subject matter experts during this redesign to ensure the new reports meet their needs. Enable dataset reusability: One major benefit of the Power BI approach is the ability to create shared datasets and dataflows. As you migrate, look for opportunities to create central semantic models (datasets) that can serve multiple reports. For instance, if several Tableau workbooks are all using similar data about sales, you can create one central Sales dataset in Power BI. Report creators across the organization can then build different Power BI reports on that single dataset without duplicating data or logic. This reduces maintenance and promotes a “build once, reuse often” strategy. Provide training and support: Expect a learning curve for teams moving to Power BI – especially those who are very fluent in Tableau. Plan for user upskilling and training programs. Establish a support community or office hours where new users can ask questions and get help. If possible, identify Power BI champions or recruit a Power BI Center of Excellence (COE) team who can guide others. During the transition, ensure there are subject matter experts (SMEs) available to address questions and validate that the new reports are correct. Manage change and expectations: It’s important to communicate why the organization is moving to Power BI (e.g. benefits like deeper integration, lower TCO, better governance) to get buy-in from end users. Some users may be resistant to change, especially if they’ve invested a lot of time in mastering Tableau. Prepare to handle varying responses – emphasize the personal benefits (like improved performance, new capabilities, or career growth with popular skills) to encourage adoption. Also, involve influential business users early and gather their feedback, so they feel ownership in the new solution. Establish governance from Day 1: Don’t wait until after migration to think about governance. Use this chance to set up Power BI governance aligned to best practices. Decide on important aspects such as workspace naming conventions, who can create or publish content, how you’ll monitor usage and costs, and how to manage data access and security (for example, designing a strategy for RLS, and deciding when to use per-user datasets vs. organizational semantic models). Good governance will ensure your shiny new Power BI environment doesn’t sprawl into chaos over time. Allow time for adjustment and iteration: Finally, be patient and iterative. Depending on the scale of your organization and the number of Tableau assets, a full migration can take months or even a year or more. Plan realistic transition periods where both systems might coexist. Continuously refine your approach with each wave of migration. Power BI’s frequent update cadence (monthly releases) means new features may emerge even during your project – stay updated, as new capabilities could simplify your migration (for example, the introduction of field parameters or Copilot might let you modernize certain Tableau features more easily). Reimagine (don’t just replicate) the experience (Step 5): Phase 1: Assessment and Planning 1. Audit Your Tableau Estate Inventory all workbooks, data sources, and calculated fields Identify high-traffic dashboards (prioritize for early migration) Categorize by complexity (Simple/Medium/Complex/Very Complex) 2. Design Your Semantic Architecture Map Tableau data sources to Power BI data sources (DirectQuery, Import, or Direct Lake) Plan star schema for fact/dimension tables Identify shared calculations that should live in semantic models vs. report-specific logic 3. Choose Storage Modes Source Type Recommended Mode Rationale Databricks Delta Lake Direct Lake Real-time analytics, no refresh lag Azure SQL Database DirectQuery or Import Based on data volume and refresh SLAs On-Premises SQL Server Import (via Gateway) Network latency considerations Excel/CSV files Import Small reference data Phase 2: Build the Semantic Layer 1. Create Star Schema Data Models Tableau often relies on flat, denormalized datasets. Power BI performs best with star schemas: Fact tables: Transactional data (sales, orders, events) with foreign keys to dimensions Dimension tables: Descriptive attributes (customers, products, dates) with primary keys Relationships: One-to-many from dimension to fact, leveraging bidirectional filtering sparingly 2. Migrate Calculations to DAX Measures Convert Tableau calculated fields to DAX measures in the semantic model: --Example of DAX: -- Define as measure: Total Revenue = SUMX( 'Sales', 'Sales'[Quantity] * 'Sales'[Unit Price] ) 2.1 Use Copilot to Accelerate DAX Development Leverage Copilot in Power BI Desktop to generate and validate DAX: Describe the calculation in natural language Copilot suggests DAX syntax Review, test, and refine Phase 3: Understanding Migration Complexity: Simple to Very Complex Dashboards Not all Tableau dashboards are created equal. The migration strategy should align with dashboard complexity, and the semantic layer approach becomes increasingly valuable as complexity grows. 1. Dashboard Conversion Best Practices Think in "pages" not "sheets": Power BI reports combine multiple visuals per page; group related visuals logically Use slicers for interactivity: Replace Tableau filters with Power BI slicers and filter pane Leverage bookmarks for navigation: Create dynamic report experiences with show/hide containers Simple Complexity Level Category Tableau Feature Power BI Equivalent Microsoft Fabric Enhancements Best Practice Notes Data Model Single custom SQL Power Query for data shaping and ETL. OneLake Shortcuts for unified data access. Use star schema for optimized performance; push logic into the semantic layer rather than visuals. Calculations Basic IF/ELSE, SUM Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) for measures and calculated columns. Copilot for Power BI to assist with DAX creation. Fabric IQ for natural language queries. Centralize calculations in semantic models for consistency and governance. Medium Complexity Level Category Tableau Feature Power BI Equivalent Fabric Enhancements Best Practice Notes Data Model Multiple custom SQL (up to 3) Connect live to databases (Azure Databricks): DirectQuery in Power BI Connect with cloud data sources: Power BI data sources OneLake Shortcuts for unified access without databricks compute cost. Semantic Models can combine multiple sources. Optimize with star schema; Prefer OneLake Shortcuts for performance; avoid heavy transformations in visuals. Calculations Nested IFs, CASE Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) for measures and calculated columns. Copilot for Power BI to assist with DAX creation. Fabric Data Agent for conversational BI. Fabric IQ for natural language queries: Fabric IQ Centralize logic in semantic models; use Copilot for automation and validation; keep calculations reusable. Reporting Tooltip format in Bar and Map visuals Select All/Clear option for Single Select dropdown Standard tooltips offer help tooltips, text, and background formatting. Dynamic tooltip will be able to create the Tooltip page and reuse it in multiple visuals The customization is so much better than the OOB tooltips Create report tooltip pages in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Learn Use Clear All Slicers Button. Disable Single Select, Add Clear All Slicers button, Customize the Button and Use the Button Complex Complexity Level Category Tableau Feature Power BI Equivalent Fabric Enhancements Best Practice Notes Data Model Multiple sources Create relationship using more than one column Composite Models in Power BI (DirectQuery + Import) for combining multiple sources, also connect to various cloud services. Dataflows for pre-processing. Power BI allows a relationship between 2 tables based on only one active column. OneLake Shortcuts for unified access without Azure Databricks compute cost; Microsoft Fabric Dataflows Gen2 offers multiple ways to ingest, transform, and load data efficiently. Consolidate sources into semantic models; use Direct Lake for performance; Plan and design data model to comply with star schema supported by Power BI Relationship DAX USERELATIONSHIP DAX for activating relationships in Power BI for a specific calculation Calculations LOD, window functions Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) for measures and calculated columns. Copilot to assist with complex DAX. Fabric IQ Ontology for semantic alignment. Q&A visual for natural language. Change how visuals interact in a Power BI report. Centralize calculations in semantic layer; use variables in DAX for readability and performance. Fabric Data Agent for a conversational BI. Very Complex Complexity Level Category Tableau Feature Power BI Equivalent Fabric Enhancements Best Practice Notes Data Model Multi-source, Excel, SQL Composite Models in Power BI (DirectQuery + Import) for combining multiple sources, also connect to various cloud services. Dataflows for pre-processing. OneLake Shortcuts for unified access; Connector overview build-in support. Mirroring for real-time sync. Combine multiple sources into well-structured semantic models for consistency and optimized performance. Calculations Predictive logic Data Analysis Expressions (DAX) for measures and calculated columns. Fabric AutoML, ML models, AI Insights, Python/R, Notebook‑based ML (Spark/Scikit‑Learn), Fabric AI Functions, Fabric IQ Ontology Fabric Data Agent for a conversational BI. Centralize logic in semantic models; leverage Copilot for automation and parameter-driven workflows. Prepare for Copilot and Q&A integration. 2. Tableau Feature Equivalents Tableau Feature Power BI Equivalent Microsoft Learn Link Calculated Fields DAX Measures DAX Documentation Parameters Field Parameters / Bookmarks Use report readers to change visuals Actions Drillthrough / Bookmarks Drillthrough Tableau Prep Power Query / Dataflows Differences between Dataflow Gen1 and Dataflow Gen2 Tableau Server Power BI Service What is Power BI? Overview of Components and Benefits Phase 4: Governance and Deployment Workspace Planning (Dev / Test / Prod Separation) A proper workspace strategy is essential for governed deployments in Fabric and Power BI. Fabric supports separate Development, Test, and Production stages using Deployment Pipelines, enabling controlled promotions of semantic models, reports, dataflows, notebooks, lakehouses, and other items. You can assign each workspace to a pipeline stage (Dev → Test → Prod) to ensure safe lifecycle management. Sensitivity Labeling (Microsoft Purview Information Protection) Sensitivity labels allow governed classification and protection of data across Fabric items. Sensitivity labels can be applied directly to Fabric items (semantic models, reports, dataflows, etc.) through the item's header flyout or the item settings. Labels from Microsoft Purview Information Protection enforce data access rules and help organizations meet compliance requirements. Endorsement & Certification (Promoted, Certified, Master Data) Endorsement improves discoverability and trust in shared organizational content. Promoted: Item creators mark content as recommended for broader use. Certified: Administrators or authorized reviewers validate content meets organizational quality standards. Master Data: Indicates authoritative single‑source‑of‑truth items such as semantic models or lakehouses. All Fabric items except dashboards can be promoted or certified; data‑containing items can be designated as Master Data. Monitoring & Capacity Planning Determine the appropriate size for fabric capacity when migrating from Tableau to PowerBI. The Fabric SKU Estimator can generate a SKU recommendation (estimate) for your capacity requirements. Ensuring performance and cost efficiency requires ongoing monitoring of your Fabric capacity. Microsoft recommends evaluating workloads using Fabric Capacity Metrics and planning SKU sizes based on real usage. Fabric uses bursting and smoothing to handle spikes while enforcing capacity limits. Monitoring helps identify high compute usage, background refreshes, and interactive workloads to optimize performance. Fabric Data Source Connections (OneLake+ Manage Connections) Microsoft Fabric is designed as an end‑to‑end analytics platform that integrates data from many different source systems into a unified environment powered by OneLake, Data Factory, Real‑Time Analytics, Dataflows , Lakehouses, Warehouses, and Mirrored Databases. The Strategic Advantage: Semantic Layer + Fabric IQ The semantic layer-first approach sets the foundation for the next evolution in enterprise analytics. Fabric IQ (announced at Ignite 2025) is Microsoft's semantic intelligence platform that auto-elevates semantic models into ontologies—structured knowledge graphs that power AI agents, Copilot experiences, and cross-domain data reasoning. What this means for your migration: Semantic models you build today become the foundation for AI-driven analytics tomorrow Data Agents can reason across multiple semantic models, answering questions that span domains Business users transition from "report consumers" to "data explorers" via natural language interfaces Conclusion: Build for the Future, Not Just for Today Migrating from Tableau to Power BI is more than a technology swap—it's an opportunity to re-architect your analytics strategy for the cloud-native, AI-powered era. The semantic layer-first approach requires upfront investment in data modeling, DAX expertise, and Fabric platform adoption. But the payoff is transformative: Consistency: Single source of truth for all business metrics Scalability: Semantic models that serve hundreds of reports and thousands of users Agility: Changes to business logic propagate instantly across the enterprise Future-readiness: Foundation for Fabric IQ, Data Agents, and AI-driven insights Start your migration with the end in mind: not just convert dashboards, but a modern, governed, AI-ready analytics platform that scales with your business. Addressing Key Migration Concerns (1) Why a semantic‑layered model approach is better than recreating Tableau dashboards A semantic‑layered modeling approach is the optimal strategy for migration and is significantly more effective than attempting to recreate Tableau dashboards exactly as they exist. By contrast, Power BI and Fabric encourage a semantic model–first architecture, where all business rules, relationships, calculations, and transformations are centralized in a governed model that serves many dashboards. The approach not only provides consistency and reuse across the enterprise but also ensures that report authors build on a single certified version of the truth. (2) How semantic-layered model approach reduces the constant redesign caused by changing data needs. A semantic‑layered modeling approach directly addresses concern about constant changes and frequent redesigns of dashboards when data evolves. With a semantic layer, changes are absorbed in the model layer—so the logic is updated once and flows automatically into all dependent reports. Combined with Fabric features like OneLake shortcuts, Direct Lake mode, and centralized governance, the semantic layer drastically reduces breakage, minimizes rework, and ensures scalability as data continues to grow and shift. Additional Resources Direct Lake in Microsoft Fabric Create Fabric Data Agents OneLake Shortcuts Write DAX queries with Copilot - DAXAzure Databricks & Fabric Disaster Recovery: The Better Together Story
Disaster recovery (DR) is a critical component of any cloud-native data analytics platform, ensuring business continuity even during rare regional outages caused by natural disasters, infrastructure failures, or other disruptions. Identify Business Critical Workloads Before designing any disaster recovery strategy, organizations must first identify which workloads are truly business‑critical and require regional redundancy. Not all Databricks or Fabric processes need full DR protection; instead, customers should evaluate the operational impact of downtime, data freshness requirements, regulatory obligations, SLAs, and dependencies across upstream and downstream systems. By classifying workloads into tiers and aligning DR investments accordingly, customers ensure they protect what matters most without over‑engineering the platform. Azure Databricks Azure Databricks requires a customer‑driven approach to disaster recovery, where organizations are responsible for replicating workspaces, data, infrastructure components, and security configurations across regions. Full System Failover (Active-Passive) Strategy A comprehensive approach that replicates all dependent services to the secondary region. Implementation requirements include: Infrastructure Components: Replicate Azure services (ADLS, Key Vault, SQL databases) using Terraform Deploy network infrastructure (subnets) in the secondary region Establish data synchronization mechanisms Data Replication Strategy: Use Deep Clone for Delta tables rather than geo-redundant storage Implement periodic synchronization jobs using Delta's incremental replication Measure data transfer results using time travel syntax Workspace Asset Synchronization: Co-deploy cluster configurations, notebooks, jobs, and permissions using CI/CD Utilize Terraform and SCIM for identity and access management Keep job concurrencies at zero in the secondary region to prevent execution Fully Redundant (Active-Active) Strategy The most sophisticated approach where all transactions are processed in multiple regions simultaneously. While providing maximum resilience, this strategy: Requires complex data synchronization between regions Incurs highest operational costs due to duplicate processing Typically needed only for mission-critical workloads with zero-tolerance for downtime Can be implemented as partial active-active, processing most workload in primary with subset in secondary Enabling Disaster Recovery Create a secondary workspace in a paired region. Use CI/CD to keep Workspace Assets Synchronized continuously. Requirement Approach Tools Cluster Configurations Co-deploy to both regions as code Terraform Code (Notebooks, Libraries, SQL) Co-deploy with CI/CD pipelines Git, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions Jobs Co-deploy with CI/CD, set concurrency to zero in secondary Databricks Asset Bundles, Terraform Permissions (Users, Groups, ACLs) Use IdP/SCIM and infrastructure as code Terraform, SCIM Secrets Co-deploy using secret management Terraform, Azure Key Vault Table Metadata Co-deploy with CI/CD workflows Git, Terraform Cloud Services (ADLS, Network) Co-deploy infrastructure Terraform Update your orchestrator (ADF, Fabric pipelines, etc.) to include a simple region toggle to reroute job execution. Replicate all dependent services (Key Vault, Storage accounts, SQL DB). Implement Delta “Deep Clone” synchronization jobs to keep datasets continuously aligned between regions. Introduce an application‑level “Sync Tool” that redirects: data ingestion compute execution Enable parallel processing in both regions for selected or all workloads. Use bi‑directional synchronization for Delta data to maintain consistency across regions. For performance and cost control, run most workloads in primary and only subset workloads in secondary to keep it warm. Microsoft Fabric Microsoft Fabric provides built‑in disaster recovery capabilities designed to keep analytics and Power BI experiences available during regional outages. Fabric simplifies continuity for reporting workloads, while still requiring customer planning for deeper data and workload replication. Power BI Business Continuity Power BI, now integrated into Fabric, provides automatic disaster recovery as a default offering: No opt-in required: DR capabilities are automatically included. Azure storage geo-redundant replication: Ensures backup instances exist in other regions. Read-only access during disasters: Semantic models, reports, and dashboards remain accessible. Always supported: BCDR for Power BI remains active regardless of OneLake DR setting. Microsoft Fabric Fabric's cross-region DR uses a shared responsibility model between Microsoft and customers: Microsoft's Responsibilities: Ensure baseline infrastructure and platform services availability Maintain Azure regional pairings for geo-redundancy. Provide DR capabilities for Power BI as default. Customer Responsibilities: Enable disaster recovery settings for capacities Set up secondary capacity and workspaces in paired regions Replicate data and configurations Enabling Disaster Recovery Organizations can enable BCDR through the Admin portal under Capacity settings: Navigate to Admin portal → Capacity settings Select the appropriate Fabric Capacity Access Disaster Recovery configuration Enable the disaster recovery toggle Critical Timing Considerations: 30-day minimum activation period: Once enabled, the setting remains active for at least 30 days and cannot be reverted. 72-hour activation window: Initial enablement can take up to 72 hours to become fully effective. Azure Databricks & Microsoft Fabric DR Considerations Building a resilient analytics platform requires understanding how disaster recovery responsibilities differ between Azure Databricks and Microsoft Fabric. While both platforms operate within Azure’s regional architecture, their DR models, failover behaviors, and customer responsibilities are fundamentally different. Recovery Procedures Procedure Databricks Fabric Failover Stop workloads, update routing, resume in secondary region. Microsoft initiates failover; customers restore services in DR capacity. Restore to Primary Stop secondary workloads, replicate data/code back, test, resume production. Recreate workspaces and items in new capacity; restore Lakehouse and Warehouse data. Asset Syncing Use CI/CD and Terraform to sync clusters, jobs, notebooks, permissions. Use Git integration and pipelines to sync notebooks and pipelines; manually restore Lakehouses. Business Considerations Consideration Databricks Fabric Control Customers manage DR strategy, failover timing, and asset replication. Microsoft manages failover; customers restore services post-failover. Regional Dependencies Must ensure secondary region has sufficient capacity and services. DR only available in Azure regions with Fabric support and paired regions. Power BI Continuity Not applicable. Power BI offers built-in BCDR with read-only access to semantic models and reports. Activation Timeline Immediate upon configuration. DR setting takes up to 72 hours to activate; 30-day wait before changes allowed.Guide for Architecting Azure-Databricks: Design to Deployment
Author's: Chris Walk cwalk, Dan Johnson danjohn1234, Eduardo dos Santos eduardomdossantos, Ted Kim tekim, Eric Kwashie ekwashie, Chris Haynes Chris_Haynes, Tayo Akigbogun takigbogun and Rafia Aqil Rafia_Aqil Peer Reviewed: Mohamed Sharaf mohamedsharaf Note: This article does not cover the Serverless Workspace option, which is currently in Public Preview. We plan to update this article once Serverless Workspaces are Generally Available. Also, while Terraform is the recommended method for production deployments due to its automation and repeatability, for simplicity in this article we will demonstrate deployment through the Azure portal. DESIGN: Architecting a Secure Azure Databricks Environment Step 1: Plan Workspace, Subscription Organization, Analytics Architecture and Compute Planning your Azure Databricks environment can follow various arrangements depending on your organization’s structure, governance model, and workload requirements. The following guidance outlines key considerations to help you design a well-architected foundation. 1.1 Align Workspaces with Business Units A recommended best practice is to align each Azure Databricks workspace with a specific business unit. This approach—often referred to as the “Business Unit Subscription” design pattern—offers several operational and governance advantages. Streamlined Access Control: Each unit manages its own workspace, simplifying permissions and reducing cross-team access risks. For example, Sales can securely access only their data and notebooks. Cost Transparency: Mapping workspaces to business units enables accurate cost attribution and supports internal chargeback models. Each workspace can be tagged to a cost center for visibility and accountability. Even within the same workspace, costs can be controlled using system tables that provide detailed usage metrics and resource consumption insights. Challenges to keep-in-mind: While per-BU workspaces have high impact, be mindful of workspace sprawl. If every small team spins up its own workspace, you might end up with dozens or hundreds of workspaces, which introduces management overhead. Databricks recommends a reasonable upper limit (on Azure, roughly 20–50 workspaces per account/subscription) because managing “collaboration, access, and security across hundreds of workspaces can become extremely difficult, even with good automation” [1]. Each workspace will need governance (user provisioning, monitoring, compliance checks), so there is a balance to strike. 1.2 Workspace Alignment and Shared Metastore Strategy As you align workspaces with business units, it's essential to understand how Unity Catalog and the metastore fit into your architecture. Unity Catalog is Databricks’ unified governance layer that centralizes access control, auditing, and data lineage across workspaces. Each Unity Catalog is backed by a metastore, which acts as the central metadata repository for tables, views, volumes, and other data assets. In Azure Databricks, you can have one metastore per region, and all workspaces within that region share it. This enables consistent governance and simplifies data sharing across teams. If your organization spans multiple regions, you’ll need to plan for cross-region sharing, which Unity Catalog supports through Delta Sharing. By aligning workspaces with business units and connecting them to a shared metastore, you ensure that governance policies are enforced uniformly, while still allowing each team to manage its own data assets securely and independently. 1.3 Distribute Workspaces Across Subscriptions When scaling Azure Databricks, consider not just the number of workspaces, but also how to distribute them across Azure subscriptions. Using multiple Azure subscriptions can serve both organizational needs and technical requirements: Environment Segmentation (Dev/Test/Prod): A common pattern is to put production workspaces in a separate Azure subscription from development or test workspaces. This provides an extra layer of isolation. Microsoft highly recommends separating workspaces into prod and dev, in separate subscriptions. This way, you can apply stricter Azure policies or network rules to the prod subscription and keep the dev subscription a bit more open for experimentation without risking prod resources. Honor Azure Resource Limits: Azure subscriptions come with certain capacity limits and Azure Databricks workspaces have their own limits (since it’s a multi-tenant PaaS). If you put all workspaces in one subscription, or all teams in one workspace, you might hit those limits. Most enterprises naturally end up with multiple subscriptions as they grow – planning this early avoids later migration headaches. If you currently have everything in one subscription, evaluate usage and consider splitting off heavy workloads or prod workloads into a new one to adhere to best practices. 1.4 Consider Completing Azure Landing Zone Assessment When evaluating and planning your next deployment, it’s essential to ensure that your current landing zone aligns with Microsoft best practices. This helps establish a robust Databricks architecture and minimizes the risk of avoidable issues. Additionally, customers who are early in their cloud journey can benefit from Cloud Assessments—such as an Azure Landing Zone Review and a review of the “Prepare for Cloud Adoption” documentation—to build a strong foundation. 1.5 Planning Your Azure Databricks Workspace Architecture Your workspace architecture should reflect the operational model of your organization and support the workloads you intend to run, from exploratory notebooks to production-grade ETL pipelines. To support your planning, Microsoft provides several reference architectures that illustrate well-architected patterns for Databricks deployments. These solution ideas can serve as starting points for designing maintainable environments: Simplified Architecture: Modern Data Platform Architecture, ETL-Intensive Workload Reference Architecture: Building ETL Intensive Architecture, End-to-End Analytics Architecture: Create a Modern Analytics Architecture. 1.6 Planning for that “Right” Compute Choosing the right compute setup in Azure Databricks is crucial for optimizing performance and controlling costs, as billing is based on Databricks Units (DBUs) using a per-second pricing model. Classic Compute: You can fine-tune your own compute by enabling auto-termination and autoscaling, using Photon acceleration, leveraging spot instances, selecting the right VM type and node count for your workload, and choosing SSDs for performance or HDDs for archival storage. Preferred by mature internal teams and developers who need advanced control over clusters—such as custom VM selection, tuning, and specialized configurations. Serverless Compute: Alternatively, managed services can simplify operations with built-in optimizations. Removes infrastructure management and offers instant scaling without cluster warm-up, making it ideal for agility and simplicity. Step 2: Plan the “Right” CIDR Range (Classic Compute) Note: You can skip this step if you plan to use serverless compute for all your resources, as CIDR range planning is not required in serverless deployments. When planning CIDR ranges for your Azure Databricks workspace, it's important to ensure your virtual network has enough IP address capacity to support cluster scaling. Why this matters: If you choose a small VNet address space and your analytics workloads grow, you might hit a ceiling where you simply cannot launch more clusters or scale-out because there are no free IPs in the subnet. The subnet sizes—and by extension, the VNet CIDR—determine how many nodes you can. Databricks recommends using a CIDR block between /16 and /24 for the VNet, and up to /26 for the two required subnets: the container subnet and the host subnet. Here’s a reference Microsoft provides. If your current workspace’s VNet lacks sufficient IP space for active cluster nodes, you can request a CIDR range update through your Azure Databricks account team as noted in the Microsoft documentation. 2.1 Considerations for CIDR Range Workload Type & Concurrency: Consider what kinds of workloads will run (ETL Pipelines, Machine Learning Notebooks, BI Dashboards, etc.) and how many jobs or clusters may need to run in parallel. High concurrency (e.g. multiple ETL jobs or many interactive clusters) means more nodes running at the same time, requiring a larger pool of IP addresses. Data Volume (Historical vs. Incremental): Are you doing a one-time historical data load or only processing new incremental data? A large backfill of terabytes of data may require spinning up a very large cluster (hundreds of nodes) to process in a reasonable time. Ongoing smaller loads might get by with fewer nodes. Estimate how much data needs processing. Transformation Complexity: The complexity of data transformations or machine learning workloads matters. Heavy transformations (joins, aggregations on big data) or complex model training can benefit more workers. If your use cases include these, you may need larger clusters (more nodes) to meet performance SLAs, which in turn demands more IP addresses available in the subnet. Data Sources and Integration: Consider how your Databricks environment will connect to data. If you have multiple data sources or sinks (e.g. ingest from many event hubs, databases, or IoT streams), you might design multiple dedicated clusters or workflows, potentially all active at once. Also, if using separate job clusters per job (Databricks Jobs), multiple clusters might launch concurrently. All these scenarios increase concurrent node count. 2.2 Configuring a Dedicated Network (VNet) per Workspace with Egress Control By default, Azure Databricks deploys its classic compute resources into a Microsoft-managed virtual network (VNet) within your Azure subscription. While this simplifies setup, it limits control over network configuration. For enhanced security and flexibility, it's recommended to use VNet Injection, which allows you to deploy the compute plane into your own customer-managed VNet. This approach enables secure integration with other Azure services using service endpoints or private endpoints, supports user-defined routes for accessing on-premises data sources, allows traffic inspection via network virtual appliances or firewalls, and provides the ability to configure custom DNS and enforce egress restrictions through network security group (NSG) rules. Within this VNet (which must reside in the same region and subscription as the Azure Databricks workspace), two subnets are required for Azure Databricks: a container subnet (referred to as private subnet) and a host subnet (referred to as public subnet). To implement front-end Private Link, back-end Private Link, or both, your workspace VNet needs a third subnet that will contain the private endpoint (PrivateLink subnet). It is recommended to also deploy an Azure Firewall for egress control. Step 3: Plan Network Architecture for Securing Azure-Databricks 3.1 Secure Cluster Connectivity Secure Cluster Connectivity, also known as No Public IP (NPIP), is a foundational security feature for Azure Databricks deployments. When enabled, it ensures that compute resources within the customer-managed virtual network (VNet) do not have public IP addresses, and no inbound ports are exposed. Instead, each cluster initiates a secure outbound connection to the Databricks control plane using port 443 (HTTPS), through a dedicated relay. This tunnel is used exclusively for administrative tasks, separate from the web application and REST API traffic, significantly reducing the attack surface. For the most secure deployment, Microsoft and Databricks strongly recommend enabling Secure Cluster Connectivity, especially in environments with strict compliance or regulatory requirements. When Secure Cluster Connectivity is enabled, both workspace subnets become private, as cluster nodes don’t have public IP addresses. 3.2 Egress with VNet Injection (NVA) For Databricks traffic, you’ll need to assign a UDR to the Databricks-managed VNet with a next hop type of Network Virtual Appliance (NVA)—this could be an Azure Firewall, NAT Gateway, or another routing device. For control plane traffic, Databricks recommends using Azure service tags, which are logical groupings of IP addresses for Azure services and should be routed with the next hop type of internet. This is important because Azure IP ranges can change frequently as new resources are provisioned, and manually maintaining IP lists is not practical. Using service tags ensures that your routing rules automatically stay up to date. 3.3 Front-End Connectivity with Azure Private Link (Standard Deployment) To further enhance security, Azure Databricks supports Private Link for front-end connections. In a standard deployment, Private Link enables users to access the Databricks web application, REST API, and JDBC/ODBC endpoints over a private VNet interface, bypassing the public internet. For organizations with no public internet access from user networks, a browser authentication private endpoint is required. This endpoint supports SSO login callbacks from Microsoft Entra ID and is shared across all workspaces in a region using the same private DNS zone. It is typically hosted in a transit VNet that bridges on-premises networks and Azure. Note: There are two deployment types: standard and simplified. To compare these deployment types, see Choose standard or simplified deployment. 3.4 Serverless Compute Networking Azure Databricks offers serverless compute options that simplify infrastructure management and accelerate workload execution. These resources run in a Databricks-managed serverless compute plane, isolated from the public internet and connected to the control plane via the Microsoft backbone network. To secure outbound traffic from serverless workloads, administrators can configure Serverless Egress Control using network policies that restrict connections by location, FQDN, or Azure resource type. Additionally, Network Connectivity Configurations (NCCs) allow centralized management of private endpoints and firewall rules. NCCs can be attached to multiple workspaces and are essential for enabling secure access to Azure services like Data Lake Storage from serverless SQL warehouses. DEPLOYMENT: Step-to-Step Implementation using Azure Portal Step 1: Create an Azure Resource Group For each new workspace, create a dedicated Resource Group (to contain the Databricks workspace resource and associated resources). Ensure that all resources are deployed in the same Region and Resource Group (i.e. workspace, subnets...) to optimize data movement performance and enhance security. Step 2: Deploy Workspace Specific Virtual Network (VNET) From your Resource Group, create a Virtual Network. Under the Security section, enable Azure Firewall. Deploying an Azure Firewall is recommended for egress control, ensuring that outbound traffic from your Databricks environment is securely managed. Define address spaces for your Virtual Network (Review Step 2 from Design). As documented, you could create a VNet with these values: IP range: First remove the default IP range, and then add IP range 10.28.0.0/23. Create subnet public-subnet with range 10.28.0.0/25. Create subnet private-subnet with range 10.28.0.128/25. Create subnet private-link with range 10.28.1.0/27. Please note: your IP values can be different depending on your IPAM and available scopes. Review + Create your Virtual Network. Step 3: Deploy Azure-Databricks Workspace: Now that networking is in place, create the Databricks workspace. Below are detailed steps your organization should review while creating workspace creation: In Azure Portal, search for Azure Databricks and click Create. Choose the Subscription, RG, Region, select Premium, enter in “Managed Resource Group name” and click Next. Managed Resource Group- will be created after your Databrick workspace is deployed and contains infrastructure resources for the workspace i.e. VNets, DBFS. Required: Enable “Secure Cluster Connectivity” (No Public IP for clusters), to ensure that Databricks clusters are deployed without public IP addresses (Review Section 3.1). Required: Enable the option to deploy into your Virtual Network (VNet Injection), also known as “Bring Your Own VNet” (Review Section 3.2). Select the Virtual Network created in Step 2. Enter Private, Public Subnet Names. Enable or Disable “Deploying Nat Gateway”, according to your workspace requirement. Disable “Allow Public Network Access”. Select “No Azure Databricks Rules” for Required NSG Rules. Select “Click on add to create a private endpoint”, this will open a panel for private endpoint setup. Click “Add” to enter your Private Link details created in Step 2. Also, ensure that Private DNS zone integration is set to “Yes” and that a new Private DNS Zone is created, indicated by (New)privatelink.azuredatabricks.net. Unless an existing DNS zone for this purpose already exists. (Optional) Under Encryption Tab, Enable Infrastructure Encryption, if you have requirement for FIPS 140-2. It comes at a cost, it takes time to encrypt and decrypt. By default your data is already encrypted. If you have a standard regulatory requirement (ex. HIPAA). (Optional) Compliance security profile- for HIPAA. (Optional) Automatic cluster updates, First Sunday of every Month. Review + Create the workspace and wait for it to deploy. Step 4: Create a private endpoint to support SSO for web browser access: Note: This step is required when front-end Private Link is enabled, and client networks cannot access the public internet. After creating your Azure Databricks workspace, if you try to launch it without the proper Private Link configuration, you will see an error like the image below: This happens because the workspace is configured to block public network access, and the necessary Private Endpoints (including the browser_authentication endpoint for SSO) are not yet in place. Create Web-Auth Workspace Note: Deploy a “dummy”: WEB_AUTH_DO_NOT_DELETE_<region> workspace in the same region as your production workspace. Purpose: Host the browser_authentication private endpoint (one required per region). Lock the workspace (Delete lock) to prevent accidental removal. Follow step 2 to create Virtual Network (Vnet) Follow step 3 and create a VNet injected “dummy” workspace. Create Browser Authentication Private Endpoint In Azure Portal, Databricks workspace (dummy), Networking, Private endpoint connections, + Private endpoint. Resource step: Target sub-resource: browser_authentication Virtual Network step: VNet: Transit/Hub VNet (central network for Private Link) Subnet: Private Endpoint subnet in that VNet (not Databricks host subnets) DNS step: Integrate with Private DNS zone: Yes Zone: privatelink.azuredatabricks.net Ensure DNS zone is linked to the Transit VNet After creation: A-records for *.pl-auth.azuredatabricks.net are auto-created in the DNS zone. Workspace Connectivity Testing If you have VPN or ExpressRoute, Bastion is not required. However, for the purposes of this article we will be testing our workpace connectivity through Bastion. If you don’t have private connectivity and need to test from inside the VNet, Azure Bastion is a convenient option. Step 5: Create Storage Account From your Resource Group, click Create and select Storage account. On the configuration page: Select Preferred Storage type as: Azure Blob Storage or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2. Choose Performance and Redundancy options based on your business requirements. Click Next to proceed. Under the Advanced tab: Enable Hierarchical namespace under Data Lake Storage Gen2. This is critical for: Directory and file-level operations, Access Control Lists (ACLs). Under the Networking tab: Set Public Network Access to Disabled. Complete the creation process and then create container(s) inside the storage account. Step 6: Create Private Endpoints for Workspace Storage Account Pre-requisite: You need to create two private endpoints from the VNet used for VNet injection to your workspace storage account for the following Target sub-resources: dfs and blob. Navigate to your Storage Account. Go to Networking, Private Endpoints tab and click on to + Create Private Endpoint. In the Create Private Endpoint wizard: Resource tab: Select your Storage Account. Set Target sub-resource to dfs for the first endpoint. Virtual Network tab: Choose the VNet you used for VNet injection. Select the appropriate subnet. Complete the creation process. The private endpoint will be auto approved and visible under Private Endpoints. Repeat the process for the second private endpoint: This time set Target sub-resource to blob. Step 7: Link Storage and Databricks Workspace: Create Access Connector In your Resource Group, create an Access Connector for Azure Databricks. No additional configuration is required during creation. Assign Role to Access Connector Navigate to your Storage Account, Access Control (IAM), Add role assignment. Select: Role: Storage Blob Data Contributor Assign access to: Managed Identity Under Members: Click Select members. Find and select your newly created Access Connector for Azure Databricks. Save the role assignment. Copy Resource ID Go to the Access Connector Overview page. Copy the Resource ID for later use in Databricks configuration. Step 8: Link Storage and Databricks Workspace: Navigate to Unity Catalog In your Databricks Workspace, go to Unity Catalog, External Data and select “Create external Location” button. Configure External Location Select ADLS as the storage type. Enter the ADLS storage URL in the following format: abfss://<container_name>@<storage_account_name>.dfs.core.windows.net/ Update these two parameters: <container_name> and <storage_name> Provide Access Connector Select “Create new storage credential” from Storage credential field. Paste the Resource ID of the Access Connector for Azure Databricks (from Step 10) into the Access Connector ID field. Validate Connection Click Submit. You should see a “Successful” message confirming the connection. Click submit and you should receive a “Successful” message, indicating your connection has succeeded. You can now create Catalogs and link your secure storage. Step 9: Configuring Serverless Compute Networking: If your organization plans to use Serverless SQL Warehouses or Serverless Jobs Compute, you must configure Serverless Networking. Add Network Connectivity Configuration (NCC) Go to the Databricks Account Console: https://accounts.azuredatabricks.net/ Navigate to Cloud resources, click Add Network Connectivity Configuration. Fill in the required fields and create a new NCC. Associate NCC with Workspace In the Account Console, go to Workspaces. Select your workspace, click Update Workspace. From the Network Connectivity Configuration dropdown, select the NCC you just created. Add Private Endpoint Rule In Cloud resources, select your NCC, select Private Endpoint Rules and click Add Private Endpoint Rule. Provide: Resource ID: Enter your Storage Account Resource ID. Note: this can be found from your storage account, click on “JSON View” top right. Azure Subresource type: dfs & blob. Approve Pending Connection Go to your Storage Account, Networking, Private Endpoints. You will see a Pending connection from Databricks. Approve the connection and you will see the Connection status in your Account Console as ESTABLISHED. Step 10: Test Your Workspace: Launch a small test cluster and verify the following: It can start (which means it can talk to the control plane). It can read/write from the storage, following the following code to confirm read/write to storage: Set Spark properties to configure Azure credentials to access Azure storage. Check Private DNS Record has been created. (Optional) If on-prem data is needed: try connecting to an on-prem database (using the ExpressRoute path): Connect your Azure Databricks workspace to your on-premises network - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn. Step 11: Account Console, Planning Workspace Access Controls and Getting Started: Once your Azure Databricks workspace is deployed, it's essential to configure access controls and begin onboarding users with the right permissions. From your account console: https://accounts.azuredatabricks.net/, you can centrally manage your environment: add users and groups, enable preview features, and view or configure all your workspaces. Azure Databricks supports fine-grained access management through Unity Catalog, cluster policies, and workspace-level roles. Start by defining who needs access to what—whether it's notebooks, tables, jobs, or clusters—and apply least-privilege principles to minimize risk. DBFS Limitation: DBFS is automatically created upon Databricks Workspace creation. DBFS can be found in your Managed Resource Group. Databricks cannot secure DBFS (see reference image below). If there is a business need to avoid DBFS then you can disable DBFS access following instructions here: Disable access to DBFS root and mounts in your existing Azure Databricks workspace. Use Unity Catalog to manage data access across catalogs, schemas, and tables, and consider implementing cluster policies to standardize compute configurations across teams. To help your teams get started, Microsoft provides a range of tutorials and best practice guides: Best practice articles - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn. Step 12: Planning Data Migration: As you prepare to move data into your Azure Databricks environment, it's important to assess your migration strategy early. This includes identifying source systems, estimating data volumes, and determining the appropriate ingestion methods—whether batch, streaming, or hybrid. For organizations with complex migration needs or legacy systems, Microsoft offers specialized support through its internal Azure Cloud Accelerated Factory program. Reach out to your Microsoft account team to explore nomination for Azure Cloud Accelerated Factory, which provides hands-on guidance, tooling, and best practices to accelerate and streamline your data migration journey. Summary Regular maintenance and governance are as important as the initial design. Continuously review the environment and update configurations as needed to address evolving requirements and threats. For example, tag all resources (workspaces, VNets, clusters, etc.) with clear identifiers (workspace name, environment, department) to track costs and ownership effectively. Additionally, enforce least privilege across the platform: ensure that only necessary users are given admin privileges, and use cluster-level access control to restrict who can create or start clusters. By following the above steps, an organization will have an Azure Databricks architecture that is securely isolated, well-governed, and scalable. References: [1] 5 Best Practices for Databricks Workspaces AzureDatabricksBestPractices/toc.md at master · Azure ... - GitHub Deploy a workspace using the Azure Portal Additional Links: Quick Introduction to Databricks: what is databricks | introduction - databricks for dummies Connect Purview with Azure Databricks: Integrating Microsoft Purview with Azure Databricks Secure Databricks Delta Share between Workspaces: Secure Databricks Delta Share for Serverless Compute Azure-Databricks Cost Optimization Guide: Databricks Cost Optimization: A Practical Guide Integrate Azure Databricks with Microsoft Fabric: Integrating Azure Databricks with Microsoft Fabric Databricks Solution Accelerators for Data & AI Azure updates Appendix 3.5 Understanding Data Transfer (Express Route vs. Public Internet) For data transfers, your organization must decide to use ExpressRoute or Internet Egress. There are several considerations that can help you determine your choice: 3.5.1. Connectivity Model • ExpressRoute: Provides a private, dedicated connection between your on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure. It bypasses the public internet entirely and connects through a network service provider. • Internet Egress: Refers to outbound data traffic from Azure to the public internet. This is the default path for most Azure services unless configured otherwise. 3.6 Planning for User-Defined Routes (UDRs) When working with Databricks deployments—especially in VNet-injected workspaces—setting up User Defined Routes (UDRs) is a smart move. It’s a best practice that helps manage and secure network traffic more effectively. By using UDRs, teams can steer traffic between Databricks components and external services in a controlled way, which not only boosts security but also supports compliance efforts. 3.6.1 UDRs and Hub and Spoke Topology If your Databricks workspace is deployed into your own virtual network (VNet), you’ll need to configure standard user-defined routes (UDRs) to manage traffic flow. In a typical hub-and-spoke architecture, UDRs are used to route all traffic from the spoke VNets to the hub VNet. 3.6.2 Hub and Spoke with VWANHUB If your Databricks workspace is deployed into your own virtual network (VNet) and is peered to a Virtual WAN (VWAN) hub as the primary connectivity hub into Azure, a user-defined route (UDR) is not required—provided that a private traffic routing policy or internet traffic routing policy is configured in the VWAN hub. 3.6.3 Use of NVAs and Service Tags For Databricks traffic, you’ll need to assign a UDR to the Databricks-managed VNet with a next hop type of Network Virtual Appliance (NVA)—this could be an Azure Firewall, NAT Gateway, or another routing device. For control plane traffic, Databricks recommends using Azure service tags, which are logical groupings of IP addresses for Azure services and should be routed with the next hop type of internet. This is important because Azure IP ranges can change frequently as new resources are provisioned, and manually maintaining IP lists is not practical. Using service tags ensures that your routing rules automatically stay up to date. 3.6.4 Default Outbound Access Retirement (Non-Serverless Compute) Microsoft is retiring default outbound internet access for new deployments starting September 30,2025. Going forward, outbound connectivity will require an explicit configuration using an NVA, NAT Gateway, Load Balancer, or Public IP address. Also, note that using a Public IP Address in the deployment is discouraged for Security purposes, and it is recommended to deploy the workspace in a ‘Secure Cluster Connectivity ration.” Configure connectivity will require an explicit configuration using an NVA, NAT Gateway, Load Balancer, or Public IP address. Also, note that using a Public IP Address in the deployment is discouraged for Security purposes, and it is recommended to deploy the workspace in a ‘Secure Cluster Connectivity ration.”Call to Action: Migrate Your Classic Alert‑trigger Automations to Automation Rules Before March 2026
Reminder: Following the Retirement Announcement published in March 2023, classic alert‑trigger automation in Microsoft Sentinel, where playbooks are triggered directly from analytic rules will be deprecated in March 2026. To ensure your alert‑driven automations continue to run without interruption, please migrate to automation rules. How to Identify the Impacted Rules To help you quickly identify if any analytic rules should be updated, we created a Logic App solution that identifies all the analytic rules which use classic automation. The solution is available in two deployment options: Subscription-level version – scans all workspaces in the subscription Workspace-level version – scans a single workspace (useful when subscription Owner permissions are not available) Both options create an output of a list of analytic rules which need to be updated as described in the next section. The solution is published as part of Sentinel's GitHub community solutions with deployment instructions and further details: sentinel-classic-automation-detection After deploying and running the tool, open the Logic App run history. The final action contains the list of the analytic rules which require migration. How to Migrate the identified Analytic Rules from Classic Alert‑trigger Automations Once you have identified the analytic rules using classic automation, follow the official Microsoft Learn guidance to migrate them to automation rules: migrate-playbooks-to-automation-rules In short: Identify classic automation in your analytic rules Create automation rules to replace the classic automation To complete the migration, remove the Alert Automation Classic Actions identified in step #1 by clicking on the three dots and 'Remove' Summary Classic automation will retire in March 2026 Use the detection tool to identify any remaining classic alert-trigger playbooks Follow the official Microsoft documentation to complete the required changes Act now to ensure your SOC automations continue to run smoothlyOverload to Optimal: Tuning Microsoft Fabric Capacity
Co-Authored by: Daya Ram, Sr. Cloud Solutions Architect and Rafia Aqil, Could Solutions Architect Optimizing Microsoft Fabric capacity is both a performance and cost exercise. By diagnosing workloads, tuning cluster and Spark settings, and applying data best practices, teams can reduce run times, avoid throttling, and lower total cost of ownership—without compromising SLAs. Use Fabric’s built-in observability (Monitoring Hub, Capacity Metrics, Spark UI) to identify hot spots and then apply cluster- and data-level remediations. Capacity Planning For capacity planning and sizing guidance, see Plan your capacity size. Selecting the wrong SKU can lead to two major issues: Over-provisioning: Paying for resources you don’t need. Under-provisioning: Struggling with performance bottlenecks and failed jobs. To simplify this process, Microsoft provides the Fabric SKU Estimator, a powerful tool designed to help organizations accurately size their capacity based on real-world usage patterns. Run the SKU Estimator before onboarding new workloads or scaling existing ones. Combine its recommendations with monitoring tools like Fabric Capacity Metrics to validate performance and adjust as needed. Options to Diagnose Capacity Issues 1) Monitoring Hub — Start with the Story of the Run What to use it for: Browse Spark activity across applications (notebooks, Spark Job Definitions, and pipelines). Quickly surface long‑running or anomalous runs; view read/write bytes, idle time, core allocation, and utilization. How to use it From the Fabric portal, open Monitoring (Monitor Hub). Select a Notebook or Spark Job Definition to run and choose Historical Runs. Inspect the Run Duration chart; click on a run to see read/write bytes, idle time, core allocation, overall utilization, and other Spark metrics. What to look for Use the guide: application detail monitoring to review and monitor your application. 2) Capacity Metrics App — Measure the Whole Environment What to use it for: Review capacity-wide utilization and system events (overloads, queueing); compare utilization across time windows and identify sustained peaks. How to use it Open the Microsoft Fabric Capacity Metrics app for your capacity. Review the Compute page (ribbon charts, utilization trends) and the System events tab to see overload or throttling windows. Use the Timepoint page to drill into a 30‑second interval and see which operations consumed the most compute. What to look for Use the Troubleshooting guide: Monitor and identify capacity usage to pinpoint top CU‑consuming items. 3) Spark UI — Diagnose at Deeper Level Why it matters: Spark UI exposes skew, shuffle, memory pressure, and long stages. Use it after Monitoring Hub/Capacity Metrics to pinpoint the problematic job. Key tabs to inspect Stages: uneven task durations (data skew), heavy shuffle read/write, large input/output volumes. Executors: storage memory, task time (GC), shuffle metrics. High GC or frequent spills indicate memory tuning is needed. Storage: which RDDs/cached tables occupy memory; any disk spill. Jobs: long‑running jobs and gaps in the timeline (driver compilation, non‑Spark code, driver overload). What to look for Set via environment Spark properties or session config. Data skew, Memory usage, High/Low Shuffles: Adjust Apache Spark settings: i.e. spark.ms.autotune.enabled, spark.task.cpus and spark.sql.shuffle.partitions. Remediation and Optimization Suggestions A) Cluster & Workspace Settings Runtime & Native Execution Engine (NEE) Use Fabric Runtime 1.3 (Spark 3.5, Delta 3.2) and enable the Native Execution Engine to boost performance; enable at the environment level under Spark compute → Acceleration. Starter Pools vs. Custom Pools Starter Pool: prehydrated, medium‑size pools; fast session starts, good for dev/quick runs. Custom Pools: size nodes, enable autoscale, dynamic executors. Create via workspace Spark Settings (requires capacity admin to enable workspace customization). High Concurrency Session Sharing Enable High Concurrency to share Spark Sessions across notebooks (and pipelines) to reduce session startup latency and cost; use session tags in pipelines to group notebooks. Autotune for Spark Enable Autotune (spark.ms.autotune.enabled = true) to auto‑adjust per‑query: spark.sql.shuffle.partitions Spark.sql.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold spark.sql.files.maxPartitionBytes. Autotune is disabled by default and is in preview; enable per environment or session. B) Data‑level best practices Microsoft Fabric offers several approaches to maintain optimal file sizes in Delta tables, review documentation here: Table Compaction - Microsoft Fabric. Intelligent Cache Enabled by default (Runtime 1.1/1.2) for Spark pools: caches frequently read files at node level for Delta/Parquet/CSV; improves subsequent read performance and TCO. OPTIMIZE & Z‑Order Run OPTIMIZE regularly to rewrite files and improve file layout. V‑Order V‑Order (disabled by default in new workspaces) can accelerate reads for read‑heavy workloads; enable via spark.sql.parquet.vorder.default = true. Vacuum Run VACUUM to remove unreferenced files (stale data); default retention is 7 days; align retention across OneLake to control storage costs and maintain time travel. Collaboration & Next Steps Engage Data Engineering Team to Define an Optimization Playbook Start with reviewing capacity sizing guidance, cluster‑level optimizations (runtime/NEE, pools, concurrency, Autotune) and then target data improvements (Z‑order, compaction, caching, query refactors). Triage: Monitor Hub → Capacity Metrics → Spark UI to map workloads and identify high‑impact jobs, and workloads causing throttling. Schedule: Operationalize maintenance: OPTIMIZE (full or selective) during off‑peak windows; enable Auto Compaction for micro‑batch/streaming writes; add VACUUM to your cadence with agreed retention. Add regular code review sessions to ensure consistent performance patterns. Fix: Adjust pool sizing or concurrency; enable Autotune; tune shuffle partitions; refactor problematic queries; re‑run compaction. Verify: Re‑run the job and change, i.e. reduced run time, lower shuffle, improved utilization.Azure Databricks Cost Optimization: A Practical Guide
Co-Authored by: Sanjeev Nair Sanjeev Nair and Rafia Aqil Rafia_Aqil This guide walks through a proven approach to Databricks cost optimization, structured in three phases: Discovery, Cluster/Data/Code Best Practices, and Team Alignment & Next Steps. Phase 1: Discovery Assessing Your Current State The following questions are designed to guide your initial assessment and help you identify areas for improvement. Documenting answers to each will provide a baseline for optimization and inform the next phases of your cost management strategy. Environment & Organization Cluster Management Cost Optimization Data Management Performance Monitoring Future Planning What is the current scale of your Databricks environment? How many workspaces do you have? How are your workspaces organized (e.g., by environment type, region, use case)? How many clusters are deployed? How many users are active? What are the primary use cases for Databricks in your organization? Data engineering Data science Machine learning Business intelligence How are clusters currently managed? Manual configuration Automated scripts Databricks REST API Cluster policies What is the average cluster uptime? Hours per day Days per week What is the average cluster utilization rate? CPU usage Memory usage What is the current monthly spend on Databricks? Total cost Breakdown by workspace Breakdown by cluster What cost management tools are currently in use? Azure Cost Management Third-party tools Are there any existing cost optimization strategies in place? Reserved instances Spot instances Cluster auto-scaling What is the current data storage strategy? Data lake Data warehouse Hybrid What is the average data ingestion rate? GB per day Number of files What is the average data processing time? ETL jobs Machine learning models What types of data formats are used in your environment? Delta Lake Parquet JSON CSV Other formats relevant to your workloads What performance monitoring tools are currently in use? Databricks Ganglia Azure Monitor Third-party tools What are the key performance metrics tracked? Job execution time Cluster performance Data processing speed Are there any planned expansions or changes to the Databricks environment? New use cases Increased data volume Additional users What are the long-term goals for Databricks cost optimization? Reducing overall spend Improving resource utilization & cost attribution Enhancing performance Understanding Databricks Cost Structure Total Cost = Cloud Cost + DBU Cost Cloud Cost: Compute (VMs, networking, IP addresses), storage (ADLS, MLflow artifacts), other services (firewalls), cluster type (serverless compute, classic compute) DBU Cost: Workload size, cluster/warehouse size, photon acceleration, compute runtime, workspace tier, SKU type (Jobs, Delta Live Tables, All Purpose Clusters, Serverless), model serving, queries per second, model execution time Diagnose Cost and Issues Effectively diagnosing cost and performance issues in Databricks requires a structured approach. Use the following steps and metrics to gain visibility into your environment and uncover actionable insights. 1. Identify Costly Workloads Account Console Usage Reports: Review usage reports to identify usage breakdowns by product, SKU name, and custom tags. Usage Breakdown by Product and SKU: Helps you understand which services and compute types (clusters, SQL warehouses, serverless options) are consuming the most resources. Custom Tags for Attribution: Tags allow you to attribute costs to teams, projects, or departments, making it easier to identify high-cost areas. Workflow and Job Analysis: By correlating usage data with workflows and jobs, you can pinpoint long-running or resource-heavy workloads that drive costs. Focus on Long-Running Workloads: Examine workloads with extended runtimes or high resource utilization. Key Question: Which pipelines or workloads are driving the majority of your costs? Now That You’ve Identified Long-Running Workloads, Review These Key Areas: 2. Review Cluster Metrics CPU Utilization: Track guest, iowait, idle, irq, nice, softirq, steal, system, and user times to understand how compute resources are being used. Memory Utilization: Monitor used, free, buffer, and cached memory to identify over- or under-utilization. Key Question: Is your cluster over- or under-utilized? Are resources being wasted or stretched too thin? 3. Review SQL Warehouse Metrics Live Statistics: Monitor warehouse status, running/queued queries, and current cluster count. Time Scale Filter: Analyze query and cluster activity over different time frames (8 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, 14 days). Peak Query Count Chart: Identify periods of high concurrency. Completed Query Count Chart: Track throughput and query success/failure rates. Running Clusters Chart: Observe cluster allocation and recycling events. Query History Table: Filter and analyze queries by user, duration, status, and statement type. Key Question: Is your SQL Warehouse over- or under-utilized? Are resources being wasted or stretched too thin? 4. Review Spark UI Stages Tab: Look for skewed data, high input/output, and shuffle times. Uneven task durations may indicate data skew or inefficient data handling. Jobs Timeline: Identify long-running jobs or stages that consume excessive resources. Stage Analysis: Determine if stages are I/O bound or suffering from data skew/spill. Executor Metrics: Monitor memory usage, CPU utilization, and disk I/O. Frequent garbage collection or high memory usage may signal the need for better resource allocation. 4.1. Spark UI: Storage & Jobs Tab Storage Level: Check if data is stored in memory, on disk, or both. Size: Assess the size of cached data. Job Analysis: Investigate jobs that dominate the timeline or have unusually long durations. Look for gaps caused by complex execution plans, non-Spark code, driver overload, or cluster malfunction. 4.2. Spark UI: Executor Tab Storage Memory: Compare used vs. available memory. Task Time (Garbage Collection): Review long tasks and garbage collection times. Shuffle Read/Write: Measure data transferred between stages. 5. Additional Diagnostic Methods System Tables in Unity Catalog: Query system tables for cost attribution and resource usage trends. Cost Observability Queries Tagging Analysis: Use tags to identify which teams or projects consume the most resources. Dashboards & Alerts: Set up cost dashboards and budget alerts for proactive monitoring. Phase 2: Cluster/Code/Data Best Practices Alignment Cluster UI Configuration and Cost Attribution Effectively configuring clusters/workloads in Databricks is essential for balancing performance, scalability, and cost. Tunning settings and features when used strategically can help organizations maximize resource efficiency and minimize unnecessary spending. Key Configuration Strategies 1. Reduce Idle Time: Clusters to incur costs even when not actively processing workloads. To avoid paying for unused resources: Enable Auto-Terminate: Set clusters automatically shut down after a period of inactivity. This simple setting can significantly reduce wasted spending. Enable Autoscaling: Workloads fluctuate in size and complexity. Autoscaling allows clusters to dynamically adjust the number of nodes based on demand: Automatic Resource Adjustment: Scale up for heavy jobs and scale down for lighter loads, ensuring you only pay for what you use. It significantly enhances cost efficiency and overall performance. For serverless and streaming, using Delta Live Tables with autoscaling is recommended. This approach leads to better resource management and reliability. Use Spot Instances: For batch processing and non-critical workloads, spot instances offer substantial cost savings: Lower VM Costs: Spot instances are typically much cheaper than standard VMs. However, they are not recommended for jobs requiring constant uptime due to potential interruptions. Considerations: Azure Spot VMs are intended for non-critical, fault-tolerant tasks. They can be evicted without notice, riskingproduction stability. No SLA guarantees mean potentialdowntime for critical applications. Using Spot VMs could lead to reliability issues in production environments. Leverage Photon Engine: Photon is Databricks’ high-performance, vectorized query engine: Accelerate Large Workloads: Photon can dramatically reduce runtime for compute-intensive tasks, improving both speed and cost efficiency. Keep Runtimes Up to Date: Using the latest Databricks runtime ensures optimal performance and security: Benefit from Improvements: Regular updates include performance enhancements, bug fixes, and new features. Apply Cluster Policies: Cluster policies help standardize configurations and enforce cost controls across teams: Governance and Consistency: Policies can restrict certain settings, enforce tagging, and ensure clusters are created with cost-effective defaults. Optimize Storage: type impacts both performance and cost: Switch from HDDs to SSDs: SSDs provide faster caching and shuffle operations, which can improve job efficiency and reduce runtime. Tag Clusters for Cost Attribution: Tagging clusters enables granular tracking and reporting: Visibility and Accountability: Use tags to attribute costs to specific teams, projects, or environments, supporting better budgeting and chargeback processes. Select the Right Cluster Type: Different workloads require different cluster types, see table below for Serverless vs Classic Compute: Feature Classic Compute Serverless Compute Control Full control over config & network Minimal control, fully managed by Databricks Startup Time Slower (unless pre-warmed) Instant Cost Model Hourly, supports reservations Pay-per-use, elastic scaling Security VNet injection, private endpoints NCC-based private connectivity Best For Heavy ETL, ML, compliance workloads Interactive queries, unpredictable demand Job Clusters: Ideal for scheduled jobs and Delta Live Tables. All-Purpose Clusters: Suited for ad-hoc analysis and collaborative work. Single-Node Clusters: Efficient for simple exploratory data analysis or pure Python tasks. Serverless Compute: Scalable, managed workloads with automatic resource management. 11. Monitor and Adjust Regularly: review cluster metrics and query history: Continuous Optimization: Use built-in dashboards to monitor usage, identify bottlenecks, and adjust cluster size or configuration as needed. Code Best Practices Avoid Reprocessing Large Tables Use a CDC (Change Data Capture) architecture with Delta Live Tables (DLT) to process only new or changed data, minimizing unnecessary computation. Ensure Code Parallelizes Well Write Spark code that leverages parallel processing. Avoid loops, deeply nested structures, and inefficient user-defined functions (UDFs) that can hinder scalability. Reduce Memory Consumption Tweak Spark configurations to minimize memory overhead. Clean out legacy or unnecessary settings that may have carried over from previous Spark versions. Prefer SQL Over Complex Python Use SQL (declarative language) for Spark jobs whenever possible. SQL queries are typically more efficient and easier to optimize than complex Python logic. Modularize Notebooks Use %run to split large notebooks into smaller, reusable modules. This improves maintainability. Use LIMIT in Exploratory Queries When exploring data, always use the LIMIT clause to avoid scanning large datasets unnecessarily. Monitor Job Performance Regularly review Spark UI to detect inefficiencies such as high shuffle, input, or output. Review the below table for optimization opportunities: Spark stage high I/O - Azure Databricks | Microsoft Learn Databricks Code Performance Enhancements & Data Engineering Best Practices By enabling the below features and applying best practices, you can significantly lower costs, accelerate job execution, and build Databricks pipelines that are both scalable and highly reliable. For more guidance review: Comprehensive Guide to Optimize Data Workloads | Databricks. Feature / Technique Purpose / Benefit How to Use / Enable / Key Notes Disk Caching Accelerates repeated reads of Parquet files Set spark.databricks.io.cache.enabled = true Dynamic File Pruning (DFP) Skips irrelevant data files during queries, improves query performance Enabled by default in Databricks Low Shuffle Merge Reduces data rewriting during MERGE operations, less need to recalculate ZORDER Use Databricks runtime with feature enabled Adaptive Query Execution (AQE) Dynamically optimizes query plans based on runtime statistics Available in Spark 3.0+, enabled by default Deletion Vectors Efficient row removal/change without rewriting entire Parquet file Enable in workspace settings, use with Delta Lake Materialized Views Faster BI queries, reduced compute for frequently accessed data Create in Databricks SQL Optimize Compacts Delta Lake files, improves query performance Run regularly, combine with ZORDER on high-cardinality columns ZORDER Physically sorts/co-locates data by chosen columns for faster queries Use with OPTIMIZE, select columns frequently used in filters/joins Auto Optimize Automatically compacts small files during writes Enable optimizeWrite and autoCompact table properties Liquid Clustering Simplifies data layout, replaces partitioning/ZORDER, flexible clustering keys Recommended for new Delta tables, enables easy redefinition of clustering keys File Size Tuning Achieve optimal file size for performance and cost Set delta.targetFileSize table property Broadcast Hash Join Optimizes joins by broadcasting smaller tables Adjust spark.sql.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold and spark.databricks.adaptive.autoBroadcastJoinThreshold Shuffle Hash Join Faster join alternative to sort-merge join Prefer over sort-merge join when broadcasting isn’t possible, Photon engine can help Cost-Based Optimizer (CBO) Improves query plans for complex joins Enabled by default, collect column/table statistics with ANALYZE TABLE Data Spilling & Skew Handles uneven data distribution and excessive shuffle Use AQE, set spark.sql.shuffle.partitions=auto, optimize partitioning Data Explosion Management Controls partition sizes after transformations (e.g., explode, join) Adjust spark.sql.files.maxPartitionBytes, use repartition() after reads Delta Merge Efficient upserts and CDC (Change Data Capture) Use MERGE operation in Delta Lake, combine with CDC architecture Data Purging (Vacuum) Removes stale data files, maintains storage efficiency Run VACUUM regularly based on transaction frequency Phase 3: Team Alignment and Next Steps Implementing Cost Observability and Taking Action Effective cost management in Databricks goes beyond configuration and code—it requires robust observability, granular tracking, and proactive measures. Below outlines how your teams can achieve this using system tables, tagging, dashboards, and actionable scripts. Cost Observability with System Tables Databricks Unity Catalog provides system tables that store operational data for your account. These tables enable historical cost observability and empower FinOps teams to analyze spend independently. System Tables Location: Found inside the Unity Catalog under the “system” schema. Key Benefits: Structured data for querying, historical analysis, and cost attribution. Action: Assign permissions to FinOps teams so they can access and analyze dedicated cost tables. Enable Tags for Granular Tracking Tagging is a powerful feature for tracking, reporting, and budgeting at a granular level. Classic Compute: Manually add key/value pairs when creating clusters, jobs, SQL Warehouses, or Model Serving endpoints. Use cluster policies to enforce custom tags. Serverless Compute: Create budget policies and assign permissions to teams or members for serverless workloads. Action: Tag all compute resources to enable detailed cost attribution and reporting. Track Costs with Dashboards and Alerts Databricks offers prebuilt dashboards and queries for cost forecasting and usage analysis. Dashboards: Visualize spend, usage trends, and forecast future costs. Prebuilt Queries: Use top queries with system tables to answer meaningful cost questions. Budget Alerts: Set up alerts in the Account Console (Usage > Budget) to receive notifications when spend approaches defined thresholds. Build Culture of Efficiency To go beyond technical fixes and build a culture of efficiency, by focusing on the below strategic actions: Collaborate with Internal Engineers: Spend time with engineering teams to understand workload patterns and optimization opportunities. Peer Reviews and Code Audits: Conduct regular code review sessions and peer reviews to ensure best practices are followed for Spark jobs, data pipelines, and cluster configurations. Create Internal Best Practice Documentation: Develop clear guidelines for writing optimized code, managing data, and maintaining clusters. Make these resources easily accessible for all teams. Implement Observability Dashboards: Use Databricks’ built-in features to create dashboards that track spend, monitor resource utilization, and highlight anomalies. Set Alerts and Budgets: Configure alerts for long-running workloads and establish budgets using prebuilt Databricks capabilities to prevent cost overruns. 5. Azure Reservations and Azure Savings Plan When optimizing Databricks costs on Azure, it’s important to understand the two main commitment-based savings options: Azure Reservations and Azure Savings Plans. Both can help you reduce compute costs, but they differ in flexibility and how savings are applied. Which Should You Choose? Reservations are ideal if you have stable, predictable Databricks workloads and want maximum savings. Savings Plans are better if you expect your compute needs to change, or if you want a simpler, more flexible way to save across multiple services. Pro Tip: You can combine both options—use Reservations for your baseline, always-on Databricks clusters, and Savings Plans for bursty, variable, or new workloads. Summary Table: Action Steps It’s critical to monitor costs continuously and align your teams with established best practices, while scheduling regular code review sessions to ensure efficiency and consistency. Area Best Practice / Action System Tables Use for historical cost analysis and attribution Tagging Apply to all compute resources for granular tracking Dashboards Visualize spend, usage, and forecasts Alerts Set budget alerts for proactive cost management Scripts/Queries Build custom analysis tools for deep insights Cluster/Data/Code Review & Align Regularly review best practices, share findings, and align teams on optimization Save on your Usage Consider Azure Reservations and Azure Savings PlanFrom Bronze to Gold: Data Quality Strategies for ETL in Microsoft Fabric
Introduction Data fuels analytics, machine learning, and AI but only if it’s trustworthy. Most organizations struggle with inconsistent schemas, nulls, data drift, or unexpected upstream changes that silently break dashboards, models, and business logic. Microsoft Fabric provides a unified analytics platform with OneLake, pipelines, notebooks, and governance capabilities. When combined with Great Expectations, an open-source data quality framework, Fabric becomes a powerful environment for enforcing data quality at scale. In this article, we explore how to implement enterprise-ready, parameterized data validation inside Fabric notebooks using Great Expectations including row-count drift detection, schema checks, primary-key uniqueness, and time-series batch validation. A quick reminder: ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is the process of pulling raw data from source systems, applying business logic and quality validations, and delivering clean, curated datasets for analytics and AI. While ETL spans the full Medallion architecture, this guide focuses specifically on data quality checks in the Bronze layer using the NYC Taxi sample dataset. 🔗 Full implementation is available in my GitHub repository: sallydabbahmsft/Data-Quality-Checks-in-Microsoft-Fabric: Data Quality Checks in Microsoft Fabric Why Data Quality Matters More Than Ever? AI and analytics initiatives fail not because of model quality but because the underlying data is inaccurate, incomplete, or inconsistent. Organizations adopting Microsoft Fabric often ask: How can we validate data as it lands in Bronze? How do we detect schema changes before they break downstream pipelines? How do we prevent silent failures, anomalies, and drift? How do we standardize data quality checks across multiple tables and pipelines? Great Expectations provides a unified, testable, automation-friendly way to answer these questions. Great Expectations in Fabric Great Expectations (GX) is an open-source library for: ✔ Declarative data quality rules ("expectations") ✔ Automated validation during ETL ✔ Rich documentation and reporting ✔ Batch-based validation for time-series or large datasets ✔ Integration with Python, Spark, SQL, and cloud data platforms Fabric notebooks now support Great Expectations natively (via PySpark), enabling engineering teams to: Build reusable DQ suites Parameterize expectations by pipeline Validate full datasets or daily partitions Integrate validation into Fabric pipelines and alerting Data Quality Across the Medallion Architecture This solution follows the Medallion Architecture, with validation at every layer. This pipeline follows a Medallion Architecture, moving data through the Bronze, Silver, and Gold layers while enforcing data quality checks at every stage. 📘 P.S. Fabric also supports this via built-in Medallion task flows: Task flows overview - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn 🥉Bronze Layer: Ingestion & Validation Ingest raw source data into Bronze without transformations. Run foundational DQ checks to ensure structural integrity. Bronze DQ answers: ➡ Did the data arrive correctly? 🥈Silver Layer: Transformation & Validation Clean, standardize, and enrich Bronze data. Validate business rules, schema consistency, reference values, and more. Silver DQ answers: ➡ Is the data accurate and logically correct? 🥇 Gold Layer: Enrichment & Consumption Produce curated, analytics-ready datasets. Validate metrics, aggregates, and business KPIs. Gold DQ answers: ➡ Can executives trust the numbers? Recommended Data Quality Validations: Bronze Layer (Raw Ingestion) Ingestion Volume & Row Drift – Validate total row count and detect unexpected volume drops or spikes. Schema & Data Type Compliance – Ensure the table structure and column data types match the expected schema. Null / Empty Column Checks – Identify missing or empty values in required fields. Primary Key Uniqueness – Detect duplicate records based on the defined composite or natural key. Silver Layer (Cleaned & Standardized Data) Reference & Domain Value Validation – Confirm that values match valid categories, lookups, or reference datasets. Business Rule Enforcement – Validate logic constraints (e.g., StartDate <= EndDate, percentages within range). Anomaly / Outlier Detection – Identify unusual patterns or values that deviate from historical behavior. Post-Standardization Deduplication – Ensure standardized and enriched records no longer contain duplicates. Gold Layer (Curated, Business-Ready Data) Metric & Aggregation Consistency – Validate totals, ratios, rollups, and other aggregated metrics. KPI Threshold Monitoring – Trigger alerts when KPIs exceed defined thresholds. Data / Feature Drift Detection (for ML) – Monitor changes in distributions across time. Cross-System Consistency Checks – Compare business metrics across internal systems to ensure alignment. Implementing Data Quality with Great Expectations in Fabric Step 1 - Read data from Lakehouse (parametrized): lakehouse_name = "Bronze" table_name = "NYC Taxi - Green" query = f"SELECT * FROM {lakehouse_name}.`{table_name}`" df = spark.sql(query) Step 2 - Create and Register a Suite: context = gx.get_context() suite = context.suites.add( gx.ExpectationSuite(name="nyc_bronze_suite") ) Step 3 - Add Bronze Layer Expectations (Reusable Function): import great_expectations as gx def add_bronze_expectations( suite: gx.ExpectationSuite, primary_key_columns: list[str], required_columns: list[str], expected_schema: list[str], expected_row_count: int | None = None, max_row_drift_pct: float = 0.2, ) -> gx.ExpectationSuite: # 1. Ingestion Count & Row Drift if expected_row_count is not None: min_rows = int(expected_row_count * (1 - max_row_drift_pct)) max_rows = int(expected_row_count * (1 + max_row_drift_pct)) row_count_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectTableRowCountToBeBetween( min_value=min_rows, max_value=max_rows, ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=row_count_expectation) # 2. Schema Compliance schema_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectTableColumnsToMatchSet( column_set=expected_schema, exact_match=True, ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=schema_expectation) # 3. Required columns: NOT NULL for col in required_columns: not_null_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectColumnValuesToNotBeNull( column=col ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=not_null_expectation) # 4. Primary key uniqueness (if provided) if primary_key_columns: unique_pk_expectation = gx.expectations.ExpectCompoundColumnsToBeUnique( column_list=primary_key_columns ) suite.add_expectation(expectation=unique_pk_expectation) return suite Step 4 - Attach Data Asset & Batch Definition: data_source = context.data_sources.add_spark(name="bronze_datasource") data_asset = data_source.add_dataframe_asset(name="nyc_bronze_data") batch_definition = data_asset.add_batch_definition_whole_dataframe("full_bronze_batch") Step 5 - Run Validation: validation_definition = gx.ValidationDefinition( data=batch_definition, suite=suite, name="Bronze_DQ_Validation" ) results = validation_definition.run( batch_parameters={"dataframe": df} ) print(results) 7. Optional: Time-Series Batch Validation (Daily Slices) Fabric does not yet support add_batch_definition_timeseries, so your notebook implements custom logic to validate each day independently: dates_df = df.select(F.to_date("lpepPickupDatetime").alias("dt")).distinct() for d in dates: df_day = df.filter(F.to_date("lpepPickupDatetime") == d) results = validation_definition.run(batch_parameters={"dataframe": df_day}) This enables: Daily anomaly detection Partition-level completeness checks Early schema drift detection Automating DQ with Fabric Pipelines Fabric pipelines can orchestrate your data quality workflow: Trigger notebook after ingestion Pass parameters (table, layer, suite name) Persist DQ results to Lakehouse or Log Analytics Configure alerts in Fabric Monitor Production workflow Run the notebook Check validation results If failures exist: Raise an incident Fail the pipeline Notify the on-call engineer This creates a closed loop of ingestion → validation → monitoring → alerting. An example of DQ pipeline: Results: How Enterprises Benefit By standardizing data quality rules across all domains, organizations ensure consistent expectations and uniform validation practices , improved observability makes data quality issues visible and actionable, enabling teams to detect and resolve failures early. This, in turn, enhances overall reliability, ensuring downstream transformations and Power BI reports operate on clean, trustworthy data. Ultimately, stronger data quality directly contributes to AI readiness high-quality, well-validated data produces significantly better analytics and machine learning outcomes. Conclusion Great Expectations + Microsoft Fabric creates a scalable, modular, enterprise-ready approach for ensuring data quality across the entire medallion architecture. Whether you're validating raw ingested data, transformed datasets, or business-ready tables, the approach demonstrated here enables consistency, observability, and automation across all pipelines. With Fabric’s unified compute, orchestration, and monitoring, teams can now integrate DQ as a first-class citizen not an afterthought. Links: Implement medallion lakehouse architecture in Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn GX Expectations Gallery • Great Expectations
End-to-End Observability for Azure Databricks: From Infrastructure to Internal Application Logging
Author's: Peter Lo PeterLo, Amudha Palani amudhapalani, Geoffrey Rathinapandi geofegeo and Rafia Aqil Rafia_Aqil Observability in Azure Databricks is the ability to continuously monitor and troubleshoot the health, performance, and usage of data workloads by capturing metrics, logs, and traces. In a structured observability approach, we consider two broad categories of logging: Internal Databricks Logging (within the Databricks environment) and External Databricks Logging (leveraging Azure services). Each plays a distinct role in providing insights. By combining internal and external observability mechanisms, organizations can achieve a comprehensive view: internal logs enable detailed analysis of Spark jobs and data quality, while external logs ensure global visibility, auditing, and integration with broader monitoring dashboards and alerting systems. The article is organized into two main sections: Infrastructure Logging for Azure Databricks (external observability) Internal Databricks Logging (in-platform observability) Considerations Addressing key questions upfront ensures your observability strategy is tailored to your organization’s unique workloads, risk profile, and operational needs. By proactively evaluating what to monitor, where to store logs, and who needs access, you can avoid blind spots, streamline incident response, and align monitoring investments with business priorities. What types of workloads are running in Databricks? Why it matters: Different workloads (e.g., batch ETL, streaming pipelines, ML training, interactive notebooks) have distinct performance profiles and failure modes. Business impact: Understanding workload types helps prioritize monitoring for mission-critical processes like real-time fraud detection or daily financial reporting. What failure scenarios need to be monitored? Examples: Job failures, cluster provisioning errors, quota limits, authentication issues. Business impact: Early detection of failures reduces downtime, improves SLA adherence, and prevents data pipeline disruptions that could affect reporting or customer-facing analytics. Where should logs be stored and analyzed? Options: Centralized Log Analytics workspace, Azure Storage for archival, Event Hub for streaming analysis. Business impact: Centralized logging enables unified dashboards, cross-team visibility, and faster incident response across data engineering, operations, and compliance teams. Who needs access to logs and alerts? Stakeholders: Data engineers, platform administrators, security analysts, compliance officers. Business impact: Role-based access ensures that the right teams can act on insights while maintaining data governance and privacy controls. Infrastructure Logging for Azure Databricks Approach 1: Diagnostic Settings for Azure Databricks Diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor allow you to capture detailed logs and metrics from your Azure Databricks workspace, supporting operational monitoring, troubleshooting, and compliance. By configuring diagnostic settings at the workspace level, administrators can route Databricks logs—including cluster events, job statuses, and audit logs—to destinations such as Log Analytics, Azure Storage, or Event Hub. This enables unified analysis, alerting, and long-term retention of critical operational data. Configuration Overview Enable Diagnostic Settings on the Databricks workspace to route logs to Log Analytics Workspace. Logs can also be combined with other logs mentioned below for full Azure Databricks observability. Here is a Guide to Azure Databricks Diagnostic Settings Log Reference: Configure diagnostic log delivery Implement tagging strategy-organizations can gain granular visibility into resource consumption and align spending with business priorities. Default tags: Automatically applied by Databricks to cloud-deployed resources. Custom tags: User-defined tags that you can add to compute resources and serverless workloads. Use Cases Operational Monitoring: Detect job or resource bottlenecks. Security & Compliance: Audit user actions and enforce governance policies. Incident Response: Correlate Databricks logs with infrastructure events for faster troubleshooting. Best Practices Enable only relevant log categories to optimize cost and performance. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to secure access to logs. Approach 2: Azure Databricks Compute Log Delivery Compute log delivery in Azure Databricks enables you to automatically collect and archive logs from Spark driver nodes, worker nodes, and cluster events for both all-purpose and job compute resources. When you create a cluster, you can specify a log delivery location—such as DBFS, Azure Storage, or a Unity Catalog volume—where logs are delivered every five minutes and archived hourly. All logs generated up until the compute resource is terminated are guaranteed to be delivered, supporting troubleshooting, auditing, and compliance. Configure: To configure the log delivery location: On the compute page, click the Advanced toggle. Click the Logging tab. Select a destination type: DBFS or Volumes (Preview). Enter the Log path. To store the logs, Databricks creates a subfolder in your chosen log path named after the compute's cluster_id. Approach 3: Azure Activity Logs Whenever you create, update, or delete Databricks resources (such as provisioning a new workspace, scaling a cluster, or modifying network settings), these actions are captured in the Activity Log. This enables teams to track who made changes, when, and what impact those changes had on the environment. Each event in the Activity Log has a particular category that is described in the following document: Azure Activity Log event schema. For Databricks, this is especially valuable for: Auditing resource deployments and configuration changes Investigating failed provisioning or quota errors Monitoring compliance with organizational policies Responding to incidents or unauthorized actions Use Cases Auditing infrastructure-level changes outside the Databricks workspace. Monitoring provisioning delays or resource availability. Best Practices Use Activity Logs in conjunction with other logs for full-stack visibility. Set up alerts for critical infrastructure events. Review logs regularly to ensure compliance and operational health. Approach 4: Azure Monitor VM Insights Azure Databricks cluster nodes run on Azure virtual machines (VMs), and their infrastructure-level performance can be monitored using Azure Monitor VM Insights (formerly OMS). This approach provides visibility into resource utilization across individual cluster VMs, helping identify bottlenecks that may affect Spark job performance or overall workload efficiency. Configuration Overview: To enable VM performance monitoring: Enable VM Insights on the Databricks cluster for VMs. Monitored Metrics: Once enabled, VM Insights collects: CPU usage, Memory consumption, Disk I/O, Network throughput, Process-level statistics. These metrics help assess whether Spark workloads are constrained by infrastructure limits, such as insufficient memory or high disk latency. Considerations This is a standard Azure VM monitoring technique and is not specific to Databricks. Use role-based access control (RBAC) to secure access to performance data. Approach 5: Virtual Network Flow Logs For Azure Databricks workspaces deployed in a custom Azure Virtual Network (VNet-injected mode), enabling Virtual Network Flow Logs provides deep visibility into IP traffic flowing through the virtual network. These logs help monitor and optimize resources or support large enterprises that are trying to detect intrusion, flow logs can help. Review common use cases here: Vnet Flow Logs Common Usecases and how logging works here: Key properties of virtual network flow logs. Follow these steps to setup Vnet Flow Logs: Create a flow log Configuration Overview Virtual Network Flow Logs are a feature of Azure Network Watcher. Optionally, logs can be analyzed using Traffic Analytics for deeper insights. These logs help identify: Unexpected or unauthorized traffic Bandwidth usage patterns Effectiveness of NSG rules and network segmentation Considerations NSG flow logging is only available for VNet-injected deployment modes. Ensure Network Watcher is enabled in the region where the Databricks workspace is deployed. Use Traffic Analytics to visualize trends and detect anomalies in network flows. Approach 6: Spark Monitoring Logging & Metrics The spark-monitoring library is a Python toolkit designed to interact with the Spark History Server REST API. Its main purpose is to help users programmatically access, analyze, and visualize Spark application metrics and job details after execution. Here’s what it offers: Application Listing: Retrieve a list of all Spark applications available on the History Server, including metadata such as application ID, name, start/end time, and status. Job and Stage Details: Access detailed information about jobs and stages within each application, including execution times, status, and resource usage. Task Metrics: Extract metrics for individual tasks, such as duration, input/output size, and shuffle statistics, supporting performance analysis and bottleneck identification. Considerations The Spark Monitoring Library must be installed, see Git Repository here. Metrics can be exported to external observability platforms for long-term retention and alerting. Use cases Automated reporting of Spark job performance and resource usage Batch analysis of completed Spark applications Integration of Spark metrics into external dashboards or monitoring systems Post-execution troubleshooting and optimization Internal Databricks Logging Approach 7: Databricks System Tables (Unity Catalog) Databricks System Tables are a recent addition to Azure Databricks observability, offering structured, SQL-accessible insights into workspace usage, performance, and cost. These tables reside in the Unity Catalog and are organized into schemas such as system.billing, system.lakeflow, and system.compute. You can enable System Tables through these steps: _enable_system_tables - Databricks Overview and Capabilities When enabled by an administrator, system tables allow users to query operational metadata directly using SQL. Examples include: system.billing.usage: Tracks compute usage (CPU core-hours, memory) per job. system.compute.clusters: Captures cluster lifecycle events. system.lakeflow.job_run: Provides job execution details. Use Cases Cost Monitoring: Aggregate usage records to identify high-cost jobs or users. Import pre-built usage dashboards to your workspaces to monitor account- and workspace-level usage: Usage dashboards and Create and monitor budgets Operational Efficiency: Track job durations, cluster concurrency, and resource utilization. In-Platform BI: Build dashboards in Databricks SQL to visualize usage trends without relying on external billing tools. Best Practices Schedule regular queries to track cost trends, job performance, and resource usage. Apply role-based access control to restrict sensitive usage data. Integrate system table insights into Databricks SQL dashboards for real-time visibility. Approach 8: Data Quality Monitoring Data Quality Monitoring is a native Azure Databricks feature designed to track data quality and machine learning model performance over time. It enables automated monitoring of Delta tables and ML inference outputs, helping teams detect anomalies, data drift, and reliability issues directly within the Databricks environment. Follow these steps to enable Data Quality Monitoring. Data Quality Monitoring supports three profile types: Time Series: Monitors time-partitioned data, computing metrics per time window. Inference: Tracks prediction drift and anomalies in model request/response logs. Snapshot: Performs full-table scans to compute metrics across the entire dataset. From the enabling Lakehouse Monitoring, on step 5 you can also enable data profiling to view Data Profiling Dashboards. Use Cases Data Quality Monitoring: Track null values, column distributions, and schema changes. Model Performance Monitoring: Detect concept drift, prediction anomalies, and accuracy degradation. Operational Reliability: Ensure consistent data pipelines and ML inference behavior. Approach 9: Databricks SQL Dashboards and Alerts Databricks SQL Dashboards and Alerts provide in-platform observability for operational monitoring, enabling teams to visualize metrics and receive notifications based on SQL query results. This approach complements infrastructure-level monitoring by focusing on application-level conditions, data correctness, and workflow health. Users can build dashboards using Databricks SQL or SQL Warehouses by querying: System tables (e.g., job runs, billing usage), Data Quality Monitoring metric tables, Custom operational datasets. You can create alerts through these steps: Databricks SQL alerts. Alerting Features: Databricks SQL supports alerting on query results, allowing users to define conditions that trigger notifications via: Email, Slack (via webhook integration). Alerts can be configured for scenarios such as: Job failure counts exceeding thresholds Row count drops in critical tables Cost/Workload spikes or resource usage anomalies Considerations Alerts are query-driven and run on a schedule; ensure queries are optimized for performance. Dashboards and alerts are workspace-specific and require appropriate permissions. Best Practices Use system tables and Data Quality Monitoring metrics as data sources for dashboards. Schedule alerts to run at appropriate intervals (e.g., hourly for job failures). Combine internal alerts with external monitoring for full-stack coverage. Approach 10: Custom Tags for Workspace-Level Assets Custom tags allow organizations to classify and organize Databricks resources (clusters, jobs, pools, notebooks) for better governance, cost tracking, and observability. Tags are key-value pairs applied at the resource level and can be propagated to Azure for billing and monitoring. Why Use Custom Tags? Cost Attribution: Assign tags like Environment=Prod, Project=HealthcareAnalytics to track costs in Azure Cost Management. Governance: Enforce policies based on tags (e.g., restrict high-cost clusters to Environment=Dev). Observability: Filter logs and metrics by tags for dashboards and alerts. Taggable Assets Clusters: Apply tags during cluster creation via the Databricks UI or REST API. Jobs: Include tags in job configurations for workload-level tracking. Instance Pools: Tag pools to manage shared compute resources. Notebooks & Workflows: Use tags in metadata for classification and reporting. Best Practices Define a standard tag taxonomy (e.g., Environment, Owner, CostCenter, Compliance). Validate tags regularly to ensure consistency across workspaces. Use tags in Log Analytics queries for cost and performance dashboards.
