Lakehouse connection - Service Principal authentication

[frithjof_v]

We need support for Service Principal authentication when creating Lakehouse connections.

Right now, Lakehouse connections can only be created using a user account. As a result, Dataflow Gen2, Pipeline copy activity, and Copy Job cannot use a Service Principal (SPN) when connecting to a Fabric Lakehouse as a source or destination.

This is an issue for us. We want to avoid user-based connections because:

• We need environment-specific identities (dev/test/prod) to prevent accidental cross-environment writes (e.g., dev pushing data to prod).

• Tying connections to personal user accounts creates fragility - things break when someone leaves the project or the organization.

Service Principal support for Lakehouse connections is required to ensure secure, reliable, and environment-isolated authentication.

The screenshot shows that only user authentication is available, not service principal authentication.

[wesleyallinq]

thanks you so much for posting this! I was looking for a solution, but apparently it doesn't exist yet.

[acteon_jon_catt]

Thanks for raising this @frithjof_v , I came here to post about this exact issue. It's the same with general ownership of artifacts, something I've raised a couple of times now - Service Principals seem to be an after thought, which is backwards IMHO.

[camec10]

Any word on this feature being added? Seems odd to force connections to be user accounts that can ultimately expire and break pipelines, etc. across the organization.