Best Practices for Microsoft Fabric Tenant Setup

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In today’s data-driven world, a well-architected data platform is critical to business agility, security, and innovation. Microsoft Fabric, Microsoft’s unified platform for data integration, analytics, and AI, offers powerful capabilities. But unlocking its full potential begins with a carefully planned tenant setup. This post details the architecture. It also covers best practices to improve your Microsoft Fabric tenant. The focus is on achieving operational excellence, strong governance, and scalable performance.

Why Fabric Tenant Setup Matters

Microsoft Fabric combines the best of Power BI, Azure Synapse, and Data Factory into a single SaaS environment. However, misconfigurations at the tenant level can lead to uncontrolled resource sprawl, weak governance, and even data leakage. A strategic setup ensures:

  • Controlled feature access
  • Secure data sharing
  • Compliance with regulatory standards
  • Cost-optimized compute resource usage
  • Efficient admin delegation

1. Understanding Tenant Settings

Tenant settings in Fabric act as policy gates that control which features and capabilities are available across your organization. These are not direct security mechanisms but UI-level controls that help enforce governance.

Access: Fabric Portal > Admin Portal > Tenant Settings

Each setting can be:

  • Disabled entirely
  • Enabled for all users
  • Enabled or disabled for specific security groups (recommended)

Note: Changes may take up to 15 minutes to apply across your organization.

2. Administrator Roles and Permissions

Managing tenant settings requires the Fabric Admin role (formerly Power BI Admin).

Best practices include:

  • Assign to individual users only
  • Use Privileged Identity Management (PIM) for time-limited access
  • Delegate administration by domain or capacity to avoid bottlenecks

3. Core Data Governance Principles

Microsoft Purview enables governance across key pillars such as:

  • Data Quality and Cataloging
  • Security and Access Control
  • Compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, and others
  • Data Lineage and Auditability
  • Responsible AI principles (fairness, transparency, accountability)

4. General Best Practices

  • Use security groups instead of individuals for managing access
  • Review and monitor settings quarterly
  • Leverage REST APIs and Power BI to audit changes

5. Recommended Tenant Settings

Security and Governance

  • Restrict “Create Fabric Items” to data professionals
  • Enable preview features only for testing environments
  • Disable “Publish to Web” to avoid public access to internal data
  • Disable exports to Excel/CSV and .pbix downloads for governance control
  • Enable PowerPoint or PDF export for presentation use

External Sharing

  • Disable B2B and guest access by default
  • Limit template app publishing unless there’s a clear use case

AI and Copilot

  • Enable Copilot features only for approved groups
  • Review data residency regulations before rollout
  • Use separate capacities for AI workloads if needed

Integration and Development

  • Enable APIs and service principals for automation and scripting
  • Enable Git integration with Azure DevOps or GitHub
  • Disable R, Python, and third-party visuals unless approved

Monitoring and Auditing

  • Enable usage metrics and per-user tracking
  • Allow workspace-level monitoring and logs

6. Fabric Capacity Management

Fabric capacity is measured in Capacity Units (CUs), provisioned through Azure. Key strategies include:

  • Bursting: Automatically provides more compute during peak demand
  • Smoothing: Spreads heavy workloads over time
  • Scale Up: Increase SKU size to get more resources
  • Scale Out: Use multiple smaller SKUs for workload isolation
  • Tryout and Timeout Capacities: Test and isolate workloads without affecting production

Use the Fabric Capacity Metrics App to monitor usage, storage, and plan scaling. For long-term data, use APIs to extract logs into a data lake or reporting solution.

7. Workspace-Level Delegation

Delegate control to workspace admins where possible. Key configuration areas include:

  • Assigning contact lists for workspace alerts
  • Connecting to Azure Data Lake Gen2 or Log Analytics
  • Integrating with Git for source control
  • Configuring Spark settings and high concurrency options
  • Using private endpoints for secure network access

8. Configuration Summary

  • Enable features for security groups, not individuals
  • Use PIM roles for short-term administrative access
  • Limit workspace and Fabric item creation to approved teams
  • Disable uncontrolled export and integration options
  • Enable Git and API integrations where development is required
  • Adopt a multi-capacity approach for scalability and governance

Final Thoughts

A well-configured Fabric tenant ensures your organization maximizes its investment in Microsoft’s data platform while maintaining strong security, governance, and operational agility. As Fabric continues to evolve, adopting a modular, security-group-driven, and capacity-aware setup is the foundation for long-term success.

Need help setting up your Fabric environment the right way? Send me a message to get started.

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