Use FinOps data in Azure Fabric - Hierarchical namespace?

[jogudev]

Hello,

I have received a question from our customer regarding the use of the FinOps Hub storage account as a source for data in Azure Fabric. I found this article about the subject:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-computing/finops/fabric/create-fabric-workspace-finops?tabs=manual-data-ingestion

In the article you can find the following information which to me is a bit unclear:

Currently we have version 0.6 of FinOps hub deployed in our customer's environment. Using the bicep templates for this release the storage account i set up with kind set to BlockBlobStorage without hierarchical namespace enabled. I did a brief check of v.0.8 of the templates and if I recall correctly the same setup was used there. This leads to two different questions:

1. Is it possible to use the FinOps Hub storage account in Fabric as it is without hierarchical namespace enabled?
2. If the answer to 1 is no, would it be safe to turn on hierarchical namespace when it has not been done from start? In our customer´s account there is data for about 8 months gathered and it would not be optimal to lose those data or for the PowerBI reports to stop working.

I hope you can provide guidance on how to proceed in this matter. Thanks in advance!

Kind regards,
Johan

[flanakin]

Yes, you can use FinOps hub storage for Fabric. I've heard of several people doing that. Hopefully, some see this and can comment.

As an FYI, another option would be to setup a Fabric eventhouse as a follower to the FinOps hub Data Explorer cluster. Based on some very limited testing, an eventhouse should offer better performance.

FYI - We're planning to add direct ingestion into an eventhouse in the coming months.

[jogudev]

Hi! Thanks for the swift reply! I also hope that some peolpe who have done this can comment further.

\ Johan

[flanakin]

@jogudev check out #1063

[jogudev]

Thanks! That was a really interesting read! And as I understood it 'Create shortcut to the toolkit ADLS in Lakehouse' was the method used there to be able to process data further in Fabric.

And that is also the method suggested here in the documentation:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-computing/finops/fabric/create-fabric-workspace-finops?tabs=manual-data-ingestion#create-a-shortcut-to-storage

[flanakin]

FYI - Stay tuned... there will be updates coming to this space soon...