01 Set‐up Fabric Accelerator

Deploy the Fabric Accelerator

1. Fork the Repository: github.com/bennyaustin/fabric-accelerator

2. Create a Service Principal: Create or reuse an existing Service Principal. The Service Principal requires Contributor and User Access Administrator roles to the subscription. Take note of the Application (client) ID, Object ID and the secret, as they will be used later ¹.

3. Fabric Connection to Wide World Importers: This accelerator uses Wide World Importer database as a sample as well as mirroring data source.

• If you don't already have it, install Wide World Importers² as Azure SQL database. A serverless compute tier with 0.5-1 vCore and 3GB of storage would be sufficient.
• Grant the Service Principal created earlier db_owner permission to Wide World Importers using this SQL script

CREATE USER [<service_principal>] FROM EXTERNAL PROVIDER
GO
EXEC sp_addrolemember 'db_owner', [<service_principal>]
GO

• From the Fabric portal, create connection to Wide World Importers. Authenticate using Service Principal method. Take note of the Connection ID, you will need this later. Grant Owner permission to the Service Principal.

4. Fabric Tenant Settings: Login to Fabric portal as Fabric administrator and enable the following tenant settings: ³

1. Microsoft Fabric: Users can create Fabric Items
2. Workspace settings: Create Workspaces
3. Developer settings: Service principals can create workspaces, connections, and deployment pipelines
4. Developer settings: Service principals can call Fabric public APIs
5. Admin API settings: Service principals can access read-only admin APIs
6. Admin API settings: Service principals can access admin APIs used for updates
7. OneLake settings: Users can access data stored in OneLake with apps external to Fabric (mirroring requirement)

5. GitHub Repository Secrets: In your forked repository, create the following repository secrets: ⁴

• ACTION_SPN_CLIENTID: Client/Application ID of the Service Principal.
• ACTION_SPN_SECRET: Service Principal Secret.
• AZURE_RG: Resource Group where the Fabric capacity in Azure will be provisioned.
• SUBSCRIPTION_ID: ID of the Azure Subscription where the resources will be provisioned.
• TENANT_ID: ID of the Entra Tenant where the resources will be provisioned.

6. Deploy Fabric Accelerator: From your forked repository, navigate to Actions and select the Deploy Fabric Accelerator workflow. Click the deploy-fabric-accelerator.yml. Edit and update the following env variables to look like the one below:

• FABRIC_CAPACITY_NAME: Name of the Fabric capacity. Specify an existing capacity or provide a name for a new one to be created during deployment.
• FABRIC_CAPACITY_LOCATION: Fabric Capacity region
• FABRIC_CAPACITY_SKU: Default is F2. Recommended F4.
• FABRIC_CAPACITY_ADMIN_ID: The Object ID of the Service Principal. If using an existing Fabric capacity, add the Service Principal as Capacity Administrator
• RESOURCE_GROUP: Resource Group of the Fabric capacity.
• WORKSPACE_NAME: Workspace where the Fabric Accelerator will be deployed.
• WORKSPACE_ADMIN_ID: Object ID of an Entra user or Security Group to be granted administrator rights for WOKSPACE_NAME
• WORKSPACE_ADMIN_TYPE: Specify user or group depending on type of WORKSPACE_ADMIN_ID
• FABRIC_SQL_DB_NAME: Name of ELT metadata database. Default: controldb-fabric-accelerator.
• BRONZE_LH: Bronze Lakehouse Name. Default: bronze_fabric_accelerator
• SILVER_LH: Silver Lakehouse Name. Default: silver_fabric_accelerator
• GOLD_DW: Gold Datawarehouse Name. Default: gold_fabric_accelerator
• WIDE_WORLD_IMPORTERS_CONNECTION_ID: Connect ID of Wide WOrld Importers from Step3

env:
  FABRIC_CAPACITY_NAME: fabricaccelerator
  FABRIC_CAPACITY_LOCATION: australiaeast
  FABRIC_CAPACITY_SKU: F2
  FABRIC_CAPACITY_ADMIN_ID: f307cb4e-10d6-440b-b3c1-6face6aca616
  RESOURCE_GROUP: rg-fabric-accelerator
  WORKSPACE_NAME: FabricAccelerator
  WORKSPACE_ADMIN_ID: 688ad7c8-d7bb-4f32-884a-05601c9762a2
  WORKSPACE_ADMIN_TYPE: user # valid values: user, group
  FABRIC_SQL_DB_NAME: controldb-fabric-accelerator
  BRONZE_LH: bronze_fabric_accelerator
  SILVER_LH: silver_fabric_accelerator
  GOLD_DW: gold_fabric_accelerator
  WIDE_WORLD_IMPORTERS_CONNECTION_ID: a0a57e51-5032-4e46-b0f0-493c9d2f51c9

Click Run Workflow to start the deployment. It typically completes in 15–20 minutes. After completion, go to the workspace and enable high concurrency for notebooks⁵ and pipelines running multiple notebooks⁶

7. Deploy controlDB objects: Follow the instructions in Deploy controlDB to deploy ELT Framework database objects.

The baseline deployment of the Fabric Accelerator is now complete.

You can now explore the features and extend them as needed. To get a good feel of how all these hang together, it's highly recommended to take a quick look at the accelerator before taking the plunge.

Check out the video for an overview of Fabric Accelerator.