2.1.2. Workspaces, Domains, and Capacity
đź’ˇ First Principle: Think of Fabric's hierarchy like a corporate office building: capacity is the building itself (power, space, utilities), workspaces are individual offices where teams do their work, and domains are floors that group related departments. Without proper organization, you'd have Finance analysts accidentally accessing HR's sensitive data, or development tests consuming production compute resources.
Consider a large enterprise with Finance, Marketing, and Operations departments. Each needs isolated workspaces for their data projects, but executives need cross-departmental reporting. Without domains and workspaces, you'd either over-share (security risk) or over-isolate (collaboration nightmare).
Capacity
- Concept: The compute and storage engine behind Fabric workloads—like the building's power supply
- SKUs: F2, F4, F8... F2048 (scaling compute units)
- Key Settings:
- Burst handling for peak loads
- Autoscale policies
- Region selection
Workspaces
- Concept: Containers for Fabric items (lakehouses, pipelines, reports)—like individual offices
- Purpose:
- Security boundary (who can access what)
- Organization unit (group related items)
- Development lifecycle (dev/test/prod workspaces)
- Roles: Admin, Member, Contributor, Viewer
Domains and Subdomains
- Concept: Logical grouping of workspaces for enterprise governance—like floors in the building
- Purpose:
- Organize workspaces by business area (Finance, Sales, HR)
- Apply consistent governance policies
- Enable self-service within boundaries
- Hierarchy: Domain → Subdomain → Workspace
Visual: Organizational Hierarchy
⚠️ Exam Trap: Assigning a workspace to a subdomain is done from the workspace settings, not from domain or subdomain settings in the admin portal. This is a frequently tested distinction.
Key Trade-Offs:
- Granular Workspaces vs. Management Overhead: Many small workspaces provide isolation but increase administrative burden
- Domain Scope vs. Flexibility: Strict domain boundaries improve governance but may complicate cross-domain collaboration
