topic Re: how to monitor notebook connection time in Data Engineering

how to monitor notebook connection time

Jeanxyz — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 12:40:27 GMT

I have a spark notebook which use a custom environment. I notice the scheduled run duration has doubled recently. I checked notebook run snapshot, it looks the actual execution time hasn't increased, so I suspect the duration increase because notebook connection time has increased significantly. How can I monitor notebook connection time during the past one week?

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

tayloramy — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 13:31:30 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz,

You’re seeing the scheduled run duration grow while the notebook run snapshot still shows similar execution time. That typically means extra time is being spent before the first cell actually runs (queueing + Spark session startup/attach, often impacted by custom environments).

Use Monitoring Hub (Historical view) to estimate startup time last 7 days. Filter to your notebook, switch to Historical view, and compare Total duration vs Running duration. The gap is a good proxy for “connection/startup” time. History goes back 30 days. See: Monitor hub.
Check the Capacity Metrics app for capacity pressure during your schedule window. Spikes in capacity load often show up as longer queue/attach times. See: Capacity Metrics app and guidance to optimize capacity.
Enable Workspace Monitoring and query logs. Workspace Monitoring creates an Eventhouse with logs/metrics you can query over the past week to chart startup overhead by run. See: Workspace monitoring overview.
If you’re using a custom Environment, make sure libraries are pre-installed and published. Avoid %pip at runtime; published environments reduce session spin-up. See: community guidance on using Environments instead of inline installs: thread. Also see Fabric’s notebook troubleshooting tips: troubleshooting guide.

If you found this helpful, consider giving some Kudos. If I answered your question or solved your problem, mark this post as the solution.

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

v-nmadadi-msft — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 09:22:14 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz ,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

If you believe a lot of time is being spent in starting the spark session which gets automatically shut down after a period of 20 minutes, which is the default timeout time.
You can adjust the session timeout at the notebook or workspace level.

To change the timeout settings, open a notebook and start a session from the Connect toolbar menu. Once the session is active, click the Session ready indicator in the lower-left corner of the notebook, and in the dialog that appears you can adjust the timeout duration as needed.

I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.
Thank you

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

v-nmadadi-msft — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 13:44:28 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz

I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you.

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

Jeanxyz — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 15:19:57 GMT

Thanks tayloramy In monitor hub, I only find total duration, not the running duration.

As a quick fix, I create an empty notebook using the same Spark environment. In this way, the total duration of this notebook = connection duration. It looks the duration time is quite long, 7 minutes. This is ironically because I have only installed one public package in the library. It will save time if I run pip install each time rather than using a custom environmennt.

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

BhaveshPatel — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 08:37:01 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz

To better get an idea, Apache Spark ( Data Lake) does not show running duration of the job .

Total Duration = It takes time to run the job. It varies on lot of other factors..

Also use best practices when using linux systems. ( Kimball methodology + Fact/Dim Tables structure etc...)

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

v-nmadadi-msft — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 05:00:06 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz

May I check if this issue has been resolved? If not, Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

v-nmadadi-msft — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 04:37:07 GMT

Hi Jeanxyz

As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if the suggestions provided by the community members for the issue worked. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions.

Thanks and regards

Re: how to monitor notebook connection time

Jeanxyz — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 08:09:44 GMT

Sorry for late reply, I don't think there is a good solution from Microsoft. I have ticked the answer from Taloramy as an answer.