Fabric - Network considerations

Question

Fabric - Network considerations

Xhevahir Mehalla 25

Hello -

I am implementing azure fabric for a small Financial institution.

The solution that I am considering is this:

Users will access Power BI to build reports
Will use Data lakehouses per Domain/Divison to store data
Data will come from Oracle Database on-prem .
Will have an application where we can load some data manually and these data will be transformed on the Lakehouse as Delta Table.
Will have three workspaces - DEV, UAT and PROD. I don't know yet about the DR - solution. Pls can suggest as well how to manage that.
It will be one tenant. One fabric admin user
Users will have access reports using PowerBI premium or PRO if this is possible
Want to use the medallion architecture where possible.

I want to know what considerations needed on the networking site and setting up an secure environment.

Connect Fabric to azure Data Lake Storage Gen 2 to pick up some data on daily basis.
Azure application loads data into Data Lakehouse.
Users connecting Fabric - data eng and other users connecting Power BI reports.
Any other network considerations I need to consider?

Apart from above can you suggest would be the best way to design the Medallion architecture using Lakehouses.

I am new to Fabric and need any help is needed.

If I can talk to someone from Microsoft as well - that will be great as well,

Thanks

Xhev

1 answer

Your answer

Answer 1

Amira Bedhiafi 33,316 Volunteer Moderator

Hello Xhevahir !

Thank you for posting on Microsoft Learn.

How will you securely connect Oracle to Fabric?

Use Azure Data Gateway or SHIR for secure ingestion from on-prem Oracle. For sensitive data, you can consider using Private Endpoint or VPN connections.

How will Fabric connect to Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2?

You can use Managed Identity for authentication. Restrict public access using firewalls or VNets, and control permissions via RBAC.

How will you control user access to Fabric workspaces?

Create separate workspaces for DEV, UAT, and PROD where you can use Entra ID groups to manage access, and restrict workspace access to trusted networks.

What license model fits your organization?

In my opinion you can use Power BI Pro for small teams and individual creators. I recommend Power BI Premium (P SKU for enterprise sharing and performance.

How will you structure your data layers?

You can use se Bronze for raw ingested data, Silver for cleaned and standardized datasets, and Gold for business ready tables used in Power BI.

How can you avoid duplication across domains? Lakehouse shortcuts will help you reference data between layers without copying files.

If you need more opinions you can post also on Fabric community.

Xhevahir Mehalla 25 Reputation points

2025-06-03T07:57:21.29+00:00
Ok I can consider partially answered.

I need more information on :

Medallion Architecture: what do I need to setup? Separate Lake houses ? Separate Datawarehouse's?

Connecting to Oracle I do not want to manage other VMs like you suggested (SHIR). what do I need to do and how is easy is to use Data Gateway?

We have a azure application which we want to use to upload file into the Fabric Lakehouse on daily basis, How do I connect/Setup this?

Pls help me share some light on these points too.

Thanks

Xhev
Amira Bedhiafi 33,316 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator

2025-06-03T19:23:39.76+00:00

Yes, ideally separate Lakehouses per domain to keep data ownership clean and this way you can enable parallel development. Each Lakehouse can host bronze/silver/gold layers as Delta tables.

Do you also need a DW? It depends as you can use Fabric Warehouse if you need strong SQL performance, integration with T-SQL tools, or reporting directly via SQL. Otherwise I can say it is enough for most medallion use cases and works well with notebooks and Power BI.

If you don’t want to manage a VM you can Skip SHIR by using the Azure On-premises Data Gateway (which is the standard mode). It’s lightweight and runs as a Windows service on any machine inside your network (doesn’t have to be a VM).

Regarding your last question, Fabric Lakehouse is built on OneLake, which supports direct file upload via REST API or Azure Blob SDK if using ADLS shortcut.

Your app can call OneLake REST API to upload files into a Lakehouse folder.

Also, if you upload to a Storage Account, you can create a shortcut in Fabric Lakehouse to that ADLS folder. Your app then writes to storage, and Fabric sees it immediately.

Or you can use Managed Identity or service principal for secure uploads.

Then in Fabric you simply create a notebook or Dataflow Gen2 to ingest the file from /Files/incoming/ into the Bronze layer as a Delta table.

Share via

Fabric - Network considerations

1 answer

Your answer