Forum Discussion
Azure Data Factory in Fabric: OS Platform and Conditional Access Challenges
Hi all,
I have a use case from a customer involving a data engineering team working with Azure Data Factory. Everything functions normally until they attempt to access it, at which point it's blocked by the company's Conditional Access Policy. The issue arises because the login process triggers a popup that appears to detect a Linux machine, even though the user is actually accessing it from a Windows machine.
The key detail is that the Azure Data Factory service itself seems to be running on a Linux-based underlying infrastructure (or something similar), which is what's being flagged and blocked by the policy set to "Block Linux OS."
Has anyone encountered this before? Is it accurate that the managed infrastructure for Azure Data Factory runs on Linux?
I know how this can be solved, but i just want to confirm my assumption, and looking for some reference from microsoft or point me to , so i can use this as evidence to security
Thanks in advance for any insights!
Hi JoeTahsin
You are correct in your assumption. Azure Data Factory is not really running on your Windows machine - it’s a cloud service hosted on Microsoft’s own infrastructure, and much of that backend runs on Linux. Because of this, when Conditional Access checks the login, it sometimes detects the Linux environment of the service itself instead of your local Windows PC. That’s why it gets flagged if the company policy is set to block Linux logins. This can look confusing, because from the user side everything seems normal, but the policy is reacting to how the service is hosted, not your computer. Nothing is actually wrong with your setup, it’s simply how ADF is built to run. The solution usually involves adjusting or exempting the policy so it doesn’t block the managed infrastructure. If your security team needs evidence, you can explain that this is expected behavior since Azure services often use Linux under the hood.
5 Replies
rohit1991Super User
Hi JoeTahsin
You are correct in your assumption. Azure Data Factory is not really running on your Windows machine - it’s a cloud service hosted on Microsoft’s own infrastructure, and much of that backend runs on Linux. Because of this, when Conditional Access checks the login, it sometimes detects the Linux environment of the service itself instead of your local Windows PC. That’s why it gets flagged if the company policy is set to block Linux logins. This can look confusing, because from the user side everything seems normal, but the policy is reacting to how the service is hosted, not your computer. Nothing is actually wrong with your setup, it’s simply how ADF is built to run. The solution usually involves adjusting or exempting the policy so it doesn’t block the managed infrastructure. If your security team needs evidence, you can explain that this is expected behavior since Azure services often use Linux under the hood.
Hi rohit1991
Thanks for your reply!
Could I also say then there might be other related services, beside Azure Data Factory, "under the hood" that are running on Linux ?,
Im pointing to some overview , or how I could find out which services those are, so I can let it fix at once .Thanks again.
- rohit1991
Hi JoeTahsin
It’s not only Azure Data Factory -many Fabric services (like Spark, Pipelines, Notebooks, and Dataflows) run on Microsoft-managed infrastructure that is Linux-based under the hood. From the user side you won’t see or control that OS choice, but Conditional Access may still detect it as Linux because that’s the actual hosting environment. Microsoft doesn’t publish a detailed list of every backend OS, so the general guidance is to assume most Fabric compute is Linux-based. If your Conditional Access policy blocks Linux, the right approach is to adjust the policy so it doesn’t apply to trusted Microsoft cloud services, otherwise these workloads will continue to be flagged.
Hi JoeTahsin ,
Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.
Could you please let us know if the issue has been resolved? I wanted to check if you had the opportunity to review the information provided by rohit1991 . If you still require support, please let us know, we are happy to assist you.
Thank you
Hi JoeTahsin ,
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.
