Quickstart: Create an Azure synapse workspace with Azure PowerShell

Article
05/11/2023

Azure PowerShell is a set of cmdlets for managing Azure resources directly from PowerShell. You can use it in your browser with Azure Cloud Shell. You can also install it on macOS, Linux, or Windows.

In this quickstart, you learn to create a Synapse workspace using Azure PowerShell.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free Azure account before you begin.

Prerequisites

Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 storage account

Important

The Azure Synapse workspace needs to be able to read and write to the selected ADLS Gen2 account. For any storage account that you link as the primary storage account, you must enable hierarchical namespace at the creation of the storage account as described in Create a storage account.

If you choose to use Cloud Shell, see Overview of Azure Cloud Shell for more information.

Install the Azure PowerShell module locally

If you choose to use PowerShell locally, this article requires that you install the Az PowerShell module and connect to your Azure account using the Connect-AzAccount cmdlet. For more information about installing the Az PowerShell module, see Install Azure PowerShell.

For more information about authentication with Azure PowerShell, see Sign in with Azure PowerShell.

Install the Azure Synapse PowerShell module

Important

While the Az.Synapse PowerShell module is in preview, you must install it separately using the Install-Module cmdlet. After this PowerShell module becomes generally available, it will be part of future Az PowerShell module releases and available by default from within Azure Cloud Shell.

Install-Module -Name Az.Synapse

Create an Azure Synapse workspace using Azure PowerShell

Define necessary environment variables to create resources for Azure Synapse workspace.

Variable name	Description
StorageAccountName	Name for your existing ADLS Gen2 storage account.
StorageAccountResourceGroup	Name of your existing ADLS Gen2 storage account resource group.
FileShareName	Name of your existing storage file system.
SynapseResourceGroup	Choose a new name for your Azure Synapse resource group.
Region	Choose one of the Azure regions.
SynapseWorkspaceName	Choose a unique name for your new Azure Synapse Workspace.
SqlUser	Choose a value for a new username.
SqlPassword	Choose a secure password.
ClientIP	Public IP Address of the system you're running PowerShell from.

Create a resource group as a container for your Azure Synapse workspace:
```
New-AzResourceGroup -Name $SynapseResourceGroup -Location $Region
```

Create an Azure Synapse Workspace:

$Cred = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential ($SqlUser, (ConvertTo-SecureString $SqlPassword -AsPlainText -Force))

$WorkspaceParams = @{
  Name = $SynapseWorkspaceName
  ResourceGroupName = $SynapseResourceGroup
  DefaultDataLakeStorageAccountName = $StorageAccountName
  DefaultDataLakeStorageFilesystem = $FileShareName
  SqlAdministratorLoginCredential = $Cred
  Location = $Region
}
New-AzSynapseWorkspace @WorkspaceParams

Get Web and Dev URL for Azure Synapse Workspace:

$WorkspaceWeb = (Get-AzSynapseWorkspace -Name $SynapseWorkspaceName -ResourceGroupName $StorageAccountResourceGroup).ConnectivityEndpoints.web
$WorkspaceDev = (Get-AzSynapseWorkspace -Name $SynapseWorkspaceName -ResourceGroupName $StorageAccountResourceGroup).ConnectivityEndpoints.dev

Create a Firewall Rule to allow your access to Azure Synapse Workspace from your machine:

$FirewallParams = @{
  WorkspaceName = $SynapseWorkspaceName
  Name = 'Allow Client IP'
  ResourceGroupName = $StorageAccountResourceGroup
  StartIpAddress = $ClientIP
  EndIpAddress = $ClientIP
}
New-AzSynapseFirewallRule @FirewallParams

Open the Azure Synapse Workspace Web URL address stored in environment variable WorkspaceWeb to access your workspace:
```
Start-Process $WorkspaceWeb
```
Once deployed, additional permissions are required.

In the Azure portal, assign other users of the workspace to the Contributor role in the workspace. For detailed steps, see Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal.
Assign other users the appropriate Synapse RBAC roles using Synapse Studio.
A member of the Owner role of the Azure Storage account must assign the Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the Azure Synapse workspace MSI and other users.

Clean up resources

Follow the steps below to delete the Azure Synapse workspace.

Warning

Deleting an Azure Synapse workspace will remove the analytics engines and the data stored in the database of the contained SQL pools and workspace metadata. It will no longer be possible to connect to the SQL or Apache Spark endpoints. All code artifacts will be deleted (queries, notebooks, job definitions and pipelines). Deleting the workspace will not affect the data in the Data Lake Store Gen2 linked to the workspace.

If the Azure Synapse workspace created in this article isn't needed, you can delete it by running the following example.

Remove-AzSynapseWorkspace -Name $SynapseWorkspaceNam -ResourceGroupName $SynapseResourceGroup

Next steps

Next, you can create SQL pools or create Apache Spark pools to start analyzing and exploring your data.