CDC for Gen1 Storage Account

Question

I want to setup a CDC in ADF which automatically checks for changes in a Gen1 Storage Account and pushes the data into Gen2 Storage Account. From the Docs, I see this can be done through a Data Flow, but that needs to have a pipeline which in turn needs Triggers. Also in new public preview CDC tool, I don't see support for Gen1.

Answer 1

Hi @Sanya Pandey As of now, Azure Data Factory’s native Change Data Capture (CDC) functionality does not support Azure Data Lake Storage Gen1 as a source. The new CDC feature (currently in public preview) is limited to certain sources like Azure SQL DB, Cosmos DB, and a few others — and ADLS Gen1 is not on the list.

This is likely because Gen1 is deprecated, and Microsoft strongly recommends migrating to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 for ongoing feature support and improved performance.

If you're looking to replicate CDC-like behavior from Gen1 to Gen2, you can consider the following workaround (Polling Pattern with ADF Pipeline):

• Use Get Metadata to scan file names or last modified timestamps in Gen1.
• Compare them against previously logged values (e.g., store last run info in a control table or blob metadata).
• Use the Copy Data activity to move only changed files to Gen2.
• Trigger this pipeline on a schedule (e.g., every 5 or 10 minutes).

It’s not real-time CDC, but it’s a reliable approach for incremental sync.

Microsoft Documentation (CDC in ADF):

• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/concepts-change-data-capture
• https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/tutorial-incremental-copy-change-data-capture-feature-portal.

Hope this helps. Do let us know if you any further queries.

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