Microsoft Fabric Documentation

What it is

Microsoft Fabric is an analytics platform delivered as software as a service. It brings together Data Factory (pipelines and Dataflows Gen2), Data Engineering (Spark notebooks and lakehouses), Data Warehouse, Real-Time Intelligence (Eventstream and Eventhouse with KQL), Data Science, Databases and Power BI over one shared storage layer, OneLake. OneLake is built on Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 and stores tables in the open Delta Lake format.

Where Fabric fits on Azure

Before Fabric, a data platform on Azure was assembled from separate services: Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2, Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics and often Azure Databricks. Those services still exist, and Azure Databricks remains widely used. Microsoft's documentation now points new analytics work towards Fabric and publishes guides for migrating Synapse pipelines, Spark workloads and dedicated SQL pools to it. Some Synapse features have been retired, such as Synapse Data Explorer in October 2025. As of 2026-09 Microsoft has not announced the retirement of Synapse as a whole.

The pages worth reading first

• What is Microsoft Fabric: the workloads and OneLake.
• Lakehouse overview and the lakehouse tutorial, including the medallion architecture.
• Data Factory in Fabric: pipelines, Dataflows Gen2 and copy jobs.
• Fabric Data Warehouse and the SQL analytics endpoint.
• OneLake shortcuts, which let you read data in ADLS Gen2, Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage without copying it.
• Capacity and licensing: Fabric runs on capacities measured in capacity units, which is how cost works.

Trying it

The Fabric trial capacity gives 60 days of free access to almost all workloads, with up to 1 TB of OneLake storage, according to the trial page as of 2026-09. Copilot and some AI features are not included in the trial. You need a Microsoft Entra work or school account; personal Gmail or Outlook addresses are not accepted directly, but Microsoft documents a route through a free Azure account. Availability can vary by tenant and region.

Is it worth your time?

Yes, if you chose Azure: Fabric is where Microsoft is investing, and the Fabric Data Engineer certification (DP-700) is built on it. The docs are thorough and updated often. Balance them with general skills: the lakehouse, Spark and SQL ideas here are the same ones you would use on Databricks, AWS or Google Cloud.

Common questions

Is Fabric the same as Power BI? Power BI is one workload inside Fabric. Fabric adds data engineering, warehousing and real-time analytics around it.

Do I still need Azure Data Factory? Many existing systems use it, so it is worth recognising. New work increasingly uses Data Factory inside Fabric, which shares many concepts.