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NagaRK
Advocate I
Advocate I

Best way to manage azure subscription, fabric capacity units and workspace for smaller organizations

Hi All,

My Requirement:  We are of small to mid sizeorganization. We have choosen Microsoft Fabric as our unified data platfom to handle various analytics usecase for different projects in our organization. I am exploring  various options to manage azure subscription, Fabric capacity units and workspaces. I have seen many ways to manage these but need your suggestion to find the best way.

 

Could you please help me on the following questions?

1)  Does it make sense, if we create smaller capacity units, dedicated azure subscription and separat workspace for each project/team in my organization? any other best way to manage? In our org, each team have different requirements. 

 

2) How do we handle dev and prod scenarios in Fabric. Do we need to create dedicated azure subscription and Fabric capacities for dev and prod environments seaprately? we are thinking to maintain separate subscription and seaparate capacity units for dev and prod to have clear separation in terms of billing and control of access.

 

3) Please do redirect any articles or videos on this topic.

 

Thank you.

 

 

2 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS
suparnababu8
Super User
Super User

Hi @NagaRK 

 

Thanks for asking good questions.

 

1) Does it make sense, if we create smaller capacity units, dedicated azure subscription and separat workspace for each project/team in my organization? any other best way to manage? In our org, each team have different requirements.

Answer: Creation of smaller capacity units and dedicating to Azure subscriptions is a good idea when you have sepearte teams with different workloads and it'll be beneficial for your each project or team. Apprently, it demands higher admistrative involvement. Try to use shared capacity for similar kind of workloads to minimize costs. 

 

Read this accepeted solution Solved: Best Practices for Assigning Different Workspaces ... - Microsoft Fabric Community by @nilendraFabric 

 

coming to 2nd questions..

 

2) How do we handle dev and prod scenarios in Fabric. Do we need to create dedicated azure subscription and Fabric capacities for dev and prod environments seaprately? we are thinking to maintain separate subscription and seaparate capacity units for dev and prod to have clear separation in terms of billing and control of access.

 

Answer: yes I agree with you. maintaining of seperate subscription and sepearte capacity units for DV and PD environments is very best practise. this will helps you controlling access, clear billing for each and for deployement pipelines also. 

 

Please read this articles. it might helps you

Modernizing Fabric Deployments: IaC and CI/CD for Enterprise Analytics | Microsoft Community Hub

Reduce Microsoft Fabric Capacity Costs with Azure Runbooks

Reduce Microsoft Fabric Capacity Costs with Azure Runbooks

 

However, take the final decission as per your client/top leadership requirements. Becuase it depends on several factors. 

 

Thank you!!

 

Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!

 

View solution in original post

burakkaragoz
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi @NagaRK ,

I can recommend the following approaches to effectively manage Microsoft Fabric in a small to medium-sized organization:

1. Project/team-based capacity, subscription and workspace management
Creating a separate Azure subscription, Fabric capacity unit, and workspace for each project or team can make sense if

If teams need to be independent from each other in terms of data security, access control and budget management,
If it is desired to separate invoicing on a project basis,
If each team has different SLA, performance or resource needs.
However, this structure can increase administrative complexity. Alternatively:

Multiple Fabric capacities can be defined under a common Azure subscription,
Capacities can be shared between multiple workspaces,
Access controls and resource management can be achieved with RBAC (Role-Based Access Control).

2. Separation of Development (Dev) and Production (Prod) environments
Separating development and production environments is a best practice. There are two common approaches for this:

Using separate Azure subscriptions makes billing and access control clearer but can increase administrative burden.

3. Resources
The following documents and videos can provide more information on the topic:

Microsoft Fabric Architecture Overview
Best practices for managing Fabric capacities Microsoft Fabric YouTube Channel

View solution in original post

7 REPLIES 7
v-mdharahman
Community Support
Community Support

Hi @NagaRK,

Thanks for reaching out to the Microsoft fabric community forum.

It looks like you are looking for a way to manage your azure subscription, Fabric capacity units and workspaces. As @burakkaragoz and @suparnababu8 both responded to your query, kindly go through their responses and check if it answers your question.

 

I would also take a moment to thank @burakkaragoz and @suparnababu8, for actively participating in the community forum and for the solutions you’ve been sharing in the community forum. Your contributions make a real difference.

 

If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let us know.  

Best Regards,
Hammad.
Community Support Team

 

If this post helps then please mark it as a solution, so that other members find it more quickly.

Thank you.

Thank you @suparnababu8  @burakkaragoz  for your help. I agree with your answers. I have marked your both answers as solutions.

burakkaragoz
Community Champion
Community Champion

Hi @NagaRK ,

I can recommend the following approaches to effectively manage Microsoft Fabric in a small to medium-sized organization:

1. Project/team-based capacity, subscription and workspace management
Creating a separate Azure subscription, Fabric capacity unit, and workspace for each project or team can make sense if

If teams need to be independent from each other in terms of data security, access control and budget management,
If it is desired to separate invoicing on a project basis,
If each team has different SLA, performance or resource needs.
However, this structure can increase administrative complexity. Alternatively:

Multiple Fabric capacities can be defined under a common Azure subscription,
Capacities can be shared between multiple workspaces,
Access controls and resource management can be achieved with RBAC (Role-Based Access Control).

2. Separation of Development (Dev) and Production (Prod) environments
Separating development and production environments is a best practice. There are two common approaches for this:

Using separate Azure subscriptions makes billing and access control clearer but can increase administrative burden.

3. Resources
The following documents and videos can provide more information on the topic:

Microsoft Fabric Architecture Overview
Best practices for managing Fabric capacities Microsoft Fabric YouTube Channel

Thank you @burakkaragoz  for the reply.  I agree with you.

 

1. The only problem that I see sharing the subscription across projects is billing. Its very dificult to track how much each project is getting billed. Capacity units be be tracked but we cannot track the storage. But is it fine if we have just one azure subsctiption and many capacity units for an organization?  Lets assume 10 to 15 production capacities under single subscrption,  we dont know which capacity is consuming more billing.

 

On the other approach, creating separate subscription for each project, what are the major administrator efforts you forsee? I personnaly like this approach as its gives clear separate and control at each project level.

 

2. In your reply you have mentioned one approach only I think you missed to mention other approach. What is the other approch for dev and Prod environments?

Thank you @NagaRK , you have made very good points.

Although using multiple capacity units under a single subscription provides convenience in terms of management, as you mentioned, billing transparency can be a serious problem. Especially the inability to track storage costs makes it difficult to distribute resources fairly between projects. At this point, tagging with Azure Cost Management + Billing tools can provide a partial solution, but it may still be limited.

Creating a separate subscription for each project offers a clearer structure in terms of both cost tracking and access control. However, this approach also increases the administrative burden: RBAC settings, policy management, resource group organization, etc. require more attention. This burden can be reduced with a centralized management strategy, for example through the use of Azure Management Groups and Policy.

A second approach for development and production environments is to distinguish between different resource groups and tags within the same subscription. While this would make the transition between environments easier, it might make cost tracking a bit more complex.

Do you think a hybrid model between these two approaches is feasible? For example, separate subscriptions for large projects and shared subscriptions for smaller ones?

NagaRK
Advocate I
Advocate I

Thank you Suparnababu for the reply.

suparnababu8
Super User
Super User

Hi @NagaRK 

 

Thanks for asking good questions.

 

1) Does it make sense, if we create smaller capacity units, dedicated azure subscription and separat workspace for each project/team in my organization? any other best way to manage? In our org, each team have different requirements.

Answer: Creation of smaller capacity units and dedicating to Azure subscriptions is a good idea when you have sepearte teams with different workloads and it'll be beneficial for your each project or team. Apprently, it demands higher admistrative involvement. Try to use shared capacity for similar kind of workloads to minimize costs. 

 

Read this accepeted solution Solved: Best Practices for Assigning Different Workspaces ... - Microsoft Fabric Community by @nilendraFabric 

 

coming to 2nd questions..

 

2) How do we handle dev and prod scenarios in Fabric. Do we need to create dedicated azure subscription and Fabric capacities for dev and prod environments seaprately? we are thinking to maintain separate subscription and seaparate capacity units for dev and prod to have clear separation in terms of billing and control of access.

 

Answer: yes I agree with you. maintaining of seperate subscription and sepearte capacity units for DV and PD environments is very best practise. this will helps you controlling access, clear billing for each and for deployement pipelines also. 

 

Please read this articles. it might helps you

Modernizing Fabric Deployments: IaC and CI/CD for Enterprise Analytics | Microsoft Community Hub

Reduce Microsoft Fabric Capacity Costs with Azure Runbooks

Reduce Microsoft Fabric Capacity Costs with Azure Runbooks

 

However, take the final decission as per your client/top leadership requirements. Becuase it depends on several factors. 

 

Thank you!!

 

Did I answer your question? Mark my post as a solution!

Proud to be a Super User!

 

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