Migrate from Azure Synapse to Microsoft Fabric.
A Synapse to Fabric migration moves your dedicated SQL pools, pipelines, and Spark workloads, along with your Power BI Premium capacity, onto Microsoft Fabric and OneLake as one unified platform. We rebuild on governed Fabric artifacts, cut over wave by wave with parity checks, and keep the business running the whole time, all inside your own Microsoft tenant.
Why move from Synapse to Fabric, and when
Microsoft Fabric folds data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and Power BI into a single SaaS platform, with every workload reading and writing the same Delta tables in OneLake. That removes the copies and hand-offs that pile up in a Synapse plus Power BI estate. Direct Lake is the payoff most teams feel first: Power BI reads Lakehouse and Warehouse tables directly, so you drop the import refresh windows and the memory ceilings that come with them.
Timing matters too. The Power BI Premium to Fabric transition is time boxed: Premium capacity (the P SKUs) is being replaced by Fabric capacity (the F SKUs), and teams still on Premium face a real deadline rather than an open-ended choice. Moving to Fabric on your own schedule, with a plan, beats being pushed into a rushed capacity swap. If Power BI is central to your reporting, our Power BI practice and Microsoft Fabric practice carry the modeling and platform work end to end.
What actually changes
The migration is not a rename. Each Synapse component maps to a Fabric equivalent, and the connections and storage paths change because data now lands in OneLake:
- Dedicated SQL pools move to the Fabric Warehouse and the Lakehouse SQL endpoint. The T-SQL surface is familiar, but tables live as Delta in OneLake and distribution and indexing assumptions are revisited.
- Synapse pipelines move to Fabric Data Factory pipelines. The orchestration patterns carry over, while linked services and datasets are rebuilt against Fabric connections.
- Synapse Spark notebooks and jobs move to Fabric Spark, writing to Lakehouse Delta tables instead of dedicated storage accounts.
- Workspaces and capacity consolidate: Synapse workspaces and Power BI Premium capacity are replaced by Fabric workspaces on F SKU capacity, with a single governance and security model.
Underneath all of it, the storage layer shifts to OneLake, which is why our data engineering work focuses on getting the lakehouse structure and Delta tables right before anything reads from them.
How we run the migration
We treat a Synapse to Fabric migration as a rebuild on a governed foundation, not a one-for-one copy of every object. The method is concrete:
- Full inventory. We catalogue every report, dataset, SQL pool, pipeline, notebook, and data source in the existing estate so nothing is discovered mid-cutover.
- Dependency mapping. We trace what feeds what, from source system through pipeline and model to the report a user opens, so we migrate in the right order.
- Rebuild on a governed semantic model. Reports are rebuilt on a governed Power BI semantic model with one definition per KPI, rather than copying forward duplicated and conflicting measures.
- Phased, wave-by-wave cutover. We migrate in waves, validating parity at each step so the numbers on Fabric match the numbers on Synapse before a workload is trusted.
- No information blackout. Coexistence keeps the current platform serving the business until each new path is confirmed, so reporting never goes dark.
- Your own tenant. Everything is built in your Microsoft tenant, on your capacity, with your governance, so you own the result outright.
For well documented estates this fits a fixed eight week engagement covering assessment, rebuild, and cutover. Larger platforms run in sequential waves over a longer window. If your move also spans Microsoft 365 or Azure AD boundaries, our tenant to tenant migration work slots into the same plan.
Coexistence during the transition
The riskiest part of any platform migration is the gap between old and new. We remove it with a deliberate coexistence period: OneLake shortcuts let Fabric read the data your Synapse workspace already owns, so pipelines and reports run against a single source while we migrate around them. Old and new paths run side by side, each workload is cut over only after parity is confirmed, and the Synapse equivalent stays available until its Fabric replacement has earned trust. You can see the kind of reporting this produces in our dashboards and case studies.
Synapse to Fabric migration: common questions
What does migrating from Synapse to Microsoft Fabric actually involve?
It means moving your Azure Synapse Analytics workloads, dedicated SQL pools, pipelines, and Spark jobs, along with your Power BI Premium capacity, onto Microsoft Fabric so everything sits on a single unified platform backed by OneLake. We do not lift and shift blindly: we inventory what exists, map dependencies, and rebuild on governed Fabric artifacts so the result is cleaner than the source, not just relocated.
Why should we move to Fabric now instead of waiting?
Two reasons. First, Fabric consolidates data engineering, warehousing, real-time analytics, and Power BI into one SaaS platform on OneLake, and Direct Lake lets Power BI read Delta tables directly without import or refresh windows. Second, the Power BI Premium capacity (P SKU) to Fabric (F SKU) transition is time boxed, so teams still on Premium face a real deadline. Planning the move deliberately beats being forced into a rushed cutover.
What changes for our dedicated SQL pools, pipelines, and Spark?
Dedicated SQL pools map to the Fabric Warehouse and Lakehouse SQL endpoint, Synapse pipelines move to Fabric Data Factory pipelines, and Synapse Spark notebooks and jobs move to Fabric Spark. The T-SQL surface, orchestration patterns, and Spark code are largely familiar, but connections, linked services, and storage paths change because data now lands in OneLake as Delta. We rebuild each layer against Fabric primitives and validate output parity before retiring the Synapse equivalent.
Can Synapse and Fabric run side by side during the transition?
Yes, and they should. We run a coexistence period where OneLake shortcuts and the existing Synapse workspace point at the same data, so pipelines and reports keep serving the business while we migrate wave by wave. There is no information blackout: each workload is cut over only after parity is confirmed, and the old path stays available until the new one is trusted.
How long does a Synapse to Fabric migration take?
It depends on the number of pipelines, the size of the SQL estate, and how much modeling debt exists. Smaller, well documented estates can fit a fixed eight week engagement covering assessment, rebuild, and phased cutover. Larger platforms run in sequential waves over a longer window. We size it against your real inventory rather than a generic promise, and everything is built in your own Microsoft tenant.
Ready to move to Microsoft Fabric?
Tell us what your Synapse and Power BI Premium estate looks like today, and we’ll come back with an assessment and a phased migration plan sized to your real inventory.