Copy entire Lakehouse to another Workspace

[Hamidr]

Hi,

Trying to copy the entier lakehouse to another workspace and based on my findings there are just two ways around it :

• Using copy activity in pipeline and copy tables one by one (loop can be used)
• Using Onelake file explorer to copy all files related to lakehouse (tables , ...) - which is very slow (.i.e : taking a day to copy ~20G)

Is there anyother way anyone has in mind ?

Thanks

[deborshi_nag]

Hello @Hamidr 

Good to know you've used Copy job and it worked well for you! There are a couple of other options that you can explore if you want -

A custom backup solution

GitHub - mjtpena/fabric-lakehouse-backup · GitHub

Using Storage explorer

Back Up and Restore a Fabric Lakehouse - Purple Frog Systems

[Hamidr]

@Shreya_Barhate @Tamanchu Thanks for your solution. I used the copy job and it did work well. just a follow up question , unlike warehouse it seems we can not have version control for the codes in lakehouse (table definition , ...) automatically and it needs to be done manual , correct ? 

[Tamanchu]

HI @Hamidr,

Great answers above one more option worth considering depending on your use case :
OneLake Shortcuts (without duplicating data)

If your goal is only to make the data accessible in another workspace without duplicating it, you can create shortcuts to the source Lakehouse.

In the target workspace :

• Create a Lakehouse (or use an existing one).
• Add a shortcut that points to the folder/tables of the source Lakehouse in OneLake.

As a result, workspace B reads the same Delta/Parquet files as workspace A, with no data being copied.

This is ideal for :

• cross‑team data sharing scenarios,
• dev environments that need to read prod data in read‑only mode.

However, you do not get an independent "copy", it is still the same physical data files, which is not suitable if you need a test environment where you can safely break or modify the data.

References : 

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/onelake/onelake-shortcuts
• https://kanerika.com/blogs/microsoft-fabric-onelake-shortcuts/
• https://radacad.com/saying-yes-to-fabric-onelake-shortcuts-no-to-duplicate/

[Shreya_Barhate · Accepted solution]

Hi,
For Lakehouse tables, use Copy job instead of a ForEach + Copy activity loop (simpler setup and built for bulk/incremental movement)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-factory/what-is-copy-job

For Lakehouse files, use AzCopy to copy between workspaces/Lakehouses (faster for large file moves than File Explorer)
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/onelake/onelake-azcopy#sample-copying-data-between-fabric-w...

If you found this useful, please give Kudos and mark as Solution.

Thanks,
Shreya