Herding Fabric Cats: Administration and Governance Guidance

#fabcon2026 #session #learning #microsoft #fabcon2026-session

Description

Fabric governance is challenging: users create workspaces fast, data sprawls, and costs spike. This session will help you "herd the cats" using Microsoft's tools.

You will leave with a practical, battle-tested governance framework and real-world strategies. (No actual cats were harmed.)

Key Takeaways

Dedicated Fabric Azure Subscription
Fabric Administrator Assignable Entra Group w/ PIM
Fabric Administrator Service Principal
Fabric Governance Workspace
Semantic Link Labs with Governance Lakehouse
Needs to be an Assignable security group
Fabric Administrator role is assigned to this AAD Group

My Notes

Action Items

Resources & Links

Slides

Herding Fabric Cats:
Administration and Governance Guidance
Fabric Administration Framework
Fabric Administration Framework
• Dedicated Fabric Azure Subscription
• Fabric Administrator Assignable Entra Group w/ PIM
• Fabric Administrator Service Principal
• Fabric Governance Workspace
• Semantic Link Labs with Governance Lakehouse
Dedicated Fabric Azure Subscription
Fabric Admin Entra Group w/ PIM
• Needs to be an Assignable security group
• Fabric Administrator role is assigned to this AAD Group
• Owner should be Fabric Admin
• Fabric Admin Service Principal becomes a permanent member
• Temporary or part-time Admins can be added as Member via PIM
• Fabric Administrator role is assigned to this AAD Group
Fabric Admin Service Principal
• Needs special privileges (look up the App Reg Read Directory settings)
• Secret is used to authenticate as SP
• Secret is stored in Fabric Admin resource group key vault
• All Semantic Link Labs notebooks use this SP to call Admin APIs
• Tenant Settings for APIs (look them up)
The Apps…
The Apps…
• Capacity Metrics App – monitors Fabric capacity usage over time, highlighting which workloads and
workspaces drive utilization, so Admins (Fabric and Capacity) can quickly identify bottlenecks and
optimize capacity performance.
• Fabric Chargeback App – helps you understand which teams, users, and workloads are driving
capacity usage, enabling you to build chargeback processes that fairly allocate costs based on
actual consumption.
Capacity Metrics App
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Shows capacity usage over time
Identifies usage signatures and trends of
capacities
Helps monitor overages and throttling
events
Provides insights into compute usage at
the workspace level
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Shows peak utilization by workload
Breaks down background vs. interactive
Helps isolate problem workspaces /
models
Pinpoints execution bottlenecks directly
to the user or artifact
Forecasts future capacity needs based
on historical usage patterns
Facilitates cost allocation and
chargeback models
Fabric Chargeback App
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Shows what percent of your capacity was utilized
by workspaces, items, or domains / subdomains
Shows your daily utilization
Utilization (CU) details
Maps compute utilization to specific billing tags or
departments
Tracks accumulated costs over custom billing
cycles
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Allows for a “skin-in-the game” approach to
internal cost allocation
Decommoditizes Fabric capacity, which increases
attention to usage / costs by business units
Helps business units forecast / budget for their
capacity usage
Enables greater accountability for resource-heavy
workloads
Simplifies cross-charging metrics for financial
reporting
Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)
Fabric Cost Analysis (FCA)
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Integrates billing data directly into Power BI
dashboards
Provides granular visibility into daily consumption
costs
Highlights subscription usage against allocated
limits
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Empowers teams to proactively manage and
reduce their spend
Ensures budget alignment across multiple Fabric
workspaces
Streamlines cloud cost reporting for stakeholders
Fabric Unified Admin Monitoring (FUAM)
Fabric Unified Admin Monitoring (FUAM)
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Consolidates admin logs and metrics across all
Fabric capacities
Tracks access patterns, sharing activities, and
workspace creation
Provides pre-built reports for auditing platformwide usage
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Enforces internal compliance and security
boundaries
Identifies orphaned or inactive workspaces for
cleanup
Simplifies audit reporting for external assessments
Fabric Spark Monitoring (w/ RTI)
Fabric Spark Monitoring (w/ RTI)
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Provides real-time telemetry into Spark job
execution and queueing
Analyzes node utilization, memory consumption,
and shuffle data
Alerts administrators of long-running or failed
Spark applications
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Optimizes Spark pool configurations to reduce
compute waste
Prevents bad code from monopolizing shared
capacity limits
Speeds up root-cause analysis during data
engineering incidents
Admin Monitoring Workspace
Admin Monitoring Workspace
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Provides a dedicated environment for centralized
administrative reporting
Hosts datasets with tenant-level activity logs and
inventory data
Serves as the foundation for custom governance
dashboards
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Restricts sensitive backend telemetry to authorized
tenant admins
Creates a definitive single source of truth for
platform governance
Enables deeper analysis into workspace and
capacity utilization trends
Other Resources
Other Resources
• Workspace Monitoring w/ Report Templates
• OneLake Catalog Govern Tab
•Workspace Monitoring w/ Report Templates
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Supplies ready-to-use Power BI templates for
workspace-level monitoring
Visualizes item usage, user interaction, and
performance metrics
Allows immediate deployment against built-in
admin datasets
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Accelerates the implementation of localized
monitoring solutions
Standardizes tracking and reporting terminology
across departments
Lowers the barrier to entry for establishing baseline
governance
OneLake Catalog Govern Tab
What it does:
How it helps govern:
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Surfaces endorsement states (Promoted vs.
Certified) across the tenant
Displays data sensitivity classifications and
lineage structures
Highlights discoverable items available within the
data estate
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Drives the adoption of high-quality, certified data
assets
Helps data stewards quickly identify untagged or
unclassified items
Increases overall trust and transparency within
self-service pipelines
Sound off.
The mic is all yours.
Influence the product roadmap.
Join the Fabric User Panel
Join the SQL User Panel
Share your feedback directly with our
Fabric product group and researchers.
Influence our SQL roadmap and ensure
it meets your real-life needs
https://aka.ms/JoinFabricUserPanel
https://aka.ms/JoinSQLUserPanel
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