Core Microsoft Fabric Concepts

1. Tenant

A Fabric tenant is a dedicated, organization-wide container provided by Microsoft Fabric.
It is the highest-level structure in the Microsoft Fabric hierarchy. A tenant is tied directly to Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), meaning all authentication, user identities, groups, and permissions are managed through Entra.

Key characteristics:

• An organization normally has a single tenant, under which all Fabric resources exist.

• The Fabric tenant maps to the root of OneLake.

  • This means all data stored in the organization’s Fabric environment ultimately resides in a unified OneLake namespace.

• The tenant is responsible for hosting and managing all Fabric items, capacities, domains, and workspaces.

• It provides a boundary for:

  • Security
  • Governance
  • Data residency
  • Licensing
  • Administrative control

The tenant sits at the top of the entire Fabric hierarchical structure, controlling how resources are managed for the whole enterprise.

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2. Capacity

A capacity in Microsoft Fabric is a dedicated set of compute and storage resources available for use at any given time.
These resources are what allow organizations to run workloads such as:

• Data pipelines
• SQL queries
• Notebooks
• Semantic model refreshes
• Real-time analytics

Important details:

• A tenant may have one or multiple capacities assigned.
• Capacity determines how many and how large the workloads can be performed simultaneously.
• Each workload consumes a certain portion of capacity depending on its complexity.
• Capacity is governed by SKUs (pricing tiers) offered by Microsoft, each with its own limits.
• During peak loads, if capacity is exhausted, tasks may slow down or queue.

• Capacity defines the ability of Fabric to:

  • Run models
  • Process data
  • Refresh reports
  • Produce output like dashboards and datasets

Fabric also supports trial capacities, enabling organizations to explore capabilities before committing to a paid tier.

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3. Domain

A domain is a logical grouping of workspaces that helps organizations structure their content according to functional or business needs.
Domains provide an organizational layer that makes it easier to manage access, governance, and ownership.

Detailed characteristics:

• Domains help categorize workspaces in ways that align with how teams work.
• They make it easier to ensure the right people have the correct access.
• Governance rules (policies, permissions, lifecycle management) can be applied at the domain level.

• Domains can be created based on:

  • Business departments (e.g., Sales, Finance, HR)
  • Organizational divisions
  • Geographical regions
  • Strategic initiatives

Example:

• A company may have:

  • A Sales domain for sales analytics
  • Marketing domain for campaign performance
  • Finance domain for budgeting and forecasting

Domains essentially help structure workspaces in a way that is manageable and scalable.

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4. Workspace

A workspace is a collection of items (datasets, pipelines, notebooks, models, etc.) brought together within a single tenant.
It acts as a management container where users collaborate on related projects.

More detailed explanation:

• Workspaces are the primary environment where users create, store, and manage Fabric items.
• They leverage the capacity assigned to them when users run workloads.

• Workspaces provide role-based access control, defining which users can:

  • Edit
  • View
  • Manage
  • Share

• They provide isolation and organization for independent teams or projects.

• Workspaces support different types of items, such as:

  • Data warehouses
  • Lakehouses
  • Data pipelines
  • Semantic models
  • Reports
  • Notebooks
  • Dashboards

Example use-case:

• A workspace for the Sales Team might include:

  • A data warehouse containing sales transaction data
  • Notebooks for data exploration
  • Pipelines to ingest CRM data
  • Semantic models for BI reporting
  • Power BI reports for leadership

Each workspace becomes a productive environment that groups all relevant assets for a specific business function.

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5. Fabric Items

Fabric items are the building blocks of the Microsoft Fabric platform.
They are the individual assets or objects that users can create and manage within Fabric workspaces.

Examples of Fabric items include:

• Data warehouses: enterprise-level SQL warehouses
• Lakehouses: storage for big data and unstructured/structured files
• Pipelines: data ingestion, ETL, orchestration
• Semantic models: models used for analytics and reporting
• Reports: Power BI visualizations
• Notebooks: code-based data exploration (Python, Spark, etc.)
• Real-time analytics items: KQL databases, event streams
• ML models: Machine learning models

In short, each Fabric item represents a functional component of the analytics and data engineering ecosystem.

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6. Why Understanding These Concepts Matters

Understanding tenant, capacity, domain, workspace, and Fabric items is essential because:

• It enables effective governance and secure data management.
• It helps admins allocate capacities and manage workloads efficiently.
• It clarifies how data flows and how resources are organized.
• It enables proper access control across teams.
• It ensures successful architecture planning and deployment of analytics solutions.