Disable activity within pipeline in Azure Synapse/Data Factory

Question

We are building a Data Warehouse on Synapse using ETL. We need a way to stop and start activities automatically in case of issues or during deployments, as the current manual disable/enable option is impractical for production.

Is there an alternative method to automate this?

Would a PowerShell command be available to enable/disable activities?

We also considered using an If condition with a control table to check each activity, but this seems too complex.

Answer 1

Hi Kunal Kishore,

Thanks for reaching out to Microsoft Q&A.

Synapse and ADF now support a feature that allows you to deactivate activities directly within the pipeline. You can set the activity state to "Inactive," which will exclude it from execution during pipeline runs. This can be done either through the activity's properties or by right-clicking on the activity to deactivate multiple at once.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/deactivate-activity

https://microsoft-bitools.blogspot.com/2023/06/synapse-and-adf-pipeline-snack-disable.html

Control Table with If Condition:

While you mentioned that using an If condition with a control table seems complex, this can still be effective. By checking a control table's status, you can dynamically decide whether to execute or skip certain activities within your pipeline based on external conditions.

PowerShell Command:

Use azure PowerShell commands to manage pipeline activities. This allows you to programmatically enable or disable activities based on specific conditions or during deployments. The relevant commands would involve using the adf module to update the activity state in your pipeline.

apart from all the above, you can also consider using deployment scripts that can automatically adjust the activity states as part of your deployment process. This can integrate with CI/CD pipelines to ensure that activities are appropriately enabled or disabled during deployments.

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