Geckert Consulting

Azure Synapse Data Ingestion Using Notebooks (Azure Plattform Compare Series Part 5)

29/02/2024 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

today we’re checking out how to ingest data with Azure Synapse Notebooks.

But lets start with the basics. Our target architecture is a medallion lakehouse architecture. So we create a container for each layer in our storage account.

If you don’t have a Synapse workspace please check my post how to create one. Afterwards we need to create a Spark Cluster in our Synapse Workspace, which can be done within the Synapse Workspace.

Clusters are sized in Tshirt measurements (S, M, L etc.). Since S is already quite big it will probably be enough for the most tables. Since these Clusters are payed by use it could be reasonable to create different clusters for different tables. E.g. for Dimensions Small and for Facts Medium.

When the cluster is created, it’s possible install packages on the Spark clusters via the management console in the Synaspe workspace.

Packages that are used in several different clusters can be added to the workspace via the Azure Portal.

This allows us to connect to any API thats available in python or via python libraries.

Since we’re trying to copy data from an azure storage we don’t any additional libraries.

In this usecase only our system assigened managed identity has access to the storage. So in order to test and develop our notebook we need to configure to use this one for authentication and context. This can be done within the notebook if you choose the gear in the top right corner and then enable the ‘Run as managed identity’- option.

Mountpoints vs Path

Usually I prefer to use mountpoints within spark, since this is the easiest solution to work with relative paths but on synapse there is a limitation, that its not possible to mount a whole container.

Even if you create it with a subfolder there still is another issue, where the mount command in Synapse doesn’t allow to use linked services with parameters. But since my earlier post, we all know that parameters are the best.

So Synapse is the exeption from the rule of thumb to use mountpoints. Instead I usually create a Setup Notebook which gets the connection Information from the keyvault, the same connection we’ve used in our dynamic linked service and write them into different variables.

Now every Notebook that is executed now first calls the Setup Notebook and then has these variables available.

We can now create a Notebook for each source system and replicate the data into our bronce layer.

Since we want to analyse the US Labor Data we now can connect to the Consumer Price Index Data provided by Microsoft. Afterwards we can read the data into a dataframe and write it as parquet file into our own datalake. So the whole Notebook looks something like this.

I hope this post gave you an short introduction, how you could replicate data into your environment.

Azure Synapse Data Ingestion Using Pipelines (Azure Plattform Compare Series Part 4)

15/02/2024 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

today we’re checking out how to ingest data into Azure Synapse with Pipelines and the Copy Data Task.

Before you start into this post please make sure you know how dynamic linked services work, since we’ll use this here.

Integration Dataset

If you’ve created a dynamic linked service you could get startet with an Integration Dataset. An Integration Dataset is a logical reference to your data. Probably the best feature here is, that they can work schemaless, so you don’t need a new Integration Datset for each source you want to extract.

In order to create one, select the Data tab and then change the view to ‘Linked’. Click the + sign and select ‘Integration Dataset’.

This will open a dialogue which lets you choose all the different sources. In my case I want to Ingest some Files, which are stored on a Datalake.

The Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 connector has two steps, where you first select the actual connector and afterwards select which kind of files you want to read/write.

Here is an example how the csv connection looks like. Just type a descriptive name and select the linked service, then you’re ready to go.

After creation start to create parameters, since we want to use the same dataset for all csv files that are available for the selected runtime.

Now its possible to add dynamic content to the filepath and the Parameter of the dynamic linked service.

Do the same steps for a parquet integration dataset. I usually try to store the bronce layer in parquet format, since the most ETL tools can work with that. Parquet also supports datatypes, which is nice for sources that also have some kind of metadata.

Pipeline

Pipelines in Azure Synapse are containers for simple logical tasks, that needs to be executed in a certain order. On Pipline level all the tasks are called Activities. I recommend to create a folder structure for the different layers. To create a Pipeline simply click on the Integrate Symbol and afterwards on the + for the Pipeline option.

In order to process all files in a certain folder in the Datalake, we have to start with getting all the filenames. The correct activity to do so, is called ‘Get Metadata’.

If you’ve create a get Metadata activity, it needs to be connected to an integration Dataset. All the Parameters that were created in the Integration Dataset before are shown here, to provide some values. The Get Metadata Task has a mandatory option which is called ‘Field List.’

In order to get the list of all Child Items (aka Files/Folders) you need to use this formular: @activity(‘GM_All_Files’).output.childItems

Now you can create a Filter activity to which filters for example for a certain filename like this: @endswith(item().name,’.csv’)

To iterate over all files add an ForEach activity, where you define to loop over @activity(‘FI_All_CSV_Files’).output.Value.

Within this loop its possible to add multiple activities. In our case we want to use a copy data task where we define the filename as the name of the current item. You can refer to the current item like this @item(). Afterwards you have access to all properties. In our case we want the name property.

As sink we use the parquet linked service. I usually recomment to use the same name as the source name and just replace the filetype.

I hope this little guide gave you a short introduction into Synapse Pipelines and how to ingest data with it into a data plattform.

Setup Secure Azure Databricks Workspace (Azure Plattform Compare Series Part 3)

30/01/2024 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

if you’ve missed my Blogpost about the Azure Basics please check the Hub and Spoke Part of it before you go on in this post. Make sure you have a managed identity, which has acess to the encryption key vault in the Azure Landing Zone.

Networking

If you want to setup a new Databricks environment I highly recommend to do so in a new Spoke VNet which has at least the size /24 and a peering to the Hub Net. Split the VNet into at least 2*/26 Subnets. This will allow you to create 59 cluster nodes. In case you need more nodes check this page for the networking requirements. Here an example of and subnet configuration:

Deligate the 2 /26 subnets to Databricks:

Create a NSG and associate it with the two /26 Subnets

Add these Rules to the NSG

Storage Account

Create Storage, with private access only. Don’t create private Enpoints here, since Microsoft will then add a random values at the end of the private Endpoint name.

Instead, create the private Endpoints afterwards and I recommend the following naming pattern pe0<storage account name>0<endpoint> and to put them into a separate ressource group.

Set the Storage to use the encryption key from the key vault of the Azure Landing Zone

Databricks

For all security features, you’ll need a Premium workspace. For the managed ressource group I suggest to use mrg0<databricksworkspace name>.

In the Networking tab, you get to define the address spaces and names for Spoke VNet 1 & 2. I suggest refraining from creating private endpoints within the initial setup again, because here, you’ll get again a random string at the end of the name.

The encryption of databricks works a bit different than the one of the storage account. Here the setup requests to enter a key identifier. Someone with access to your encryption key vault could provide this String, which can be found within the key

So this encryption tab should look like this (You could enable to automatically rotate the key).

Note: Make sure the ‘AzureDatabricks’ Service Principal has acess to the Key Vault Keys. You’ll find this Service Pricipal only in Key Vault ressources.

Now create the private endpoints for the databricks workspace, with your naming pattern.

Note: You only need one browser_authentication endpoint for the whole network. So make sure, this private Endpoint is either in the Hub or in your production environment.

Now setup the private DNS Zones in your Hub and then everything is done.

I hope this little guide helps you in your further projects.

Setup Secure Azure Synapse (Azure Plattform Compare Series Part 2)

15/01/2024 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

if you’ve missed my Blogpost about the Azure Basics please check the Hub and Spoke Part of it before you go on in this post. Make sure you have a managed identity, which has acess to the encryption key vault in the Azure Landing Zone.

Networking

To create an Azure Synapse Workspace you won’t need a big VNet. I recomment to create a new Spoke VNet with the sice of at least /26, so you have enough room for potentially multiple workspaces. Since the Synapse componets won’t need a Subnet delegation there is no need create some.

In order for Azure Synapse to work we won’t need any NSGs.

Storage Account

Create Storage, with private access only. Don’t create private Enpoints here, since Microsoft will then add a random values at the end of the private Endpoint name.

Instead, create the private Endpoints afterwards and I recommend the following naming pattern pe0<storage account name>0<endpoint> and to put them into a separate ressource group.

Set the Storage to use the encryption key from the key vault of the Azure Landing Zone

Azure Synapse Workspace

When you create a Synapse workspace you’ll need to define a managed ressource group. For this I recommend to add mrg0 in front of the actual synapse workspace name.

I would suggest to only use Entra ID to authentication, since this is much easier to maintain.

In order to activate the double encryption for the dedicated and serverless SQL pool you’ll need an encryption key. You could manage this within a key vault. If you use a key vault, you’ll need a user assigend managed identity or you could give the permissions to the system assigend managed identity after the workspace creation.

To connect to the different system you’ll need to activate the managed virtual network. You should also disable the public access to the workspace.

Now create the private endpoints for the synapse workspace, with your naming pattern.

Note: You only need one web endpoint for the whole network. So make sure, this private Endpoint is either in the Hub or in your production environment.

Now setup the private DNS Zones in your Hub and then everything is done.

I hope this little guide helps you in your further projects.

Setup Microsoft Fabric (Azure Plattform Compare Series Part 1)

29/12/2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

today we’re looking into the setup of Microsoft Fabric and how to create this as good as possible. This Post is probably for you, if you don’t have any PowerBI premium capacity, or if your tennant is in a region where Fabric currently isn’t available. Please check this page for a list of all available regions.

In order to create a fabric capacity, log into the Azure Portal and search for ‘Microsoft Fabric’.

If you click on Create you’ll be introduced to a very short setup. Currently Microsoft doesn’t provide any naming abbreviation for a fabric capacity so I took ‘fc’.

Please note that your data will be stored in another region if your tennant region isn’t available.

That’s already it for the Azure Portal.

Then move to the fabric portal and create a new workspace if you don’t want to impact anything on your exsisting Power BI workspaces. Otherwise this will also work on an old workspace.

In the workspace click onto ‘Workspace Setting’.

Then go into the ‘Premium’ Tab and select ‘Fabric capacity’ and then in the dropdown choose the correct capacity.

Unfortunately Microsoft currently doesn’t support any Networking ressources like private endpoints or private DNS Zones.

I hope this little guide helps you in your further projects.

Azure Basics

15/12/2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

today we’re going to take a short detour into Azure Network Infrastructure, so we can later on this Blog know what we’re talking about. I’ll come back to this Post from time to time, to add new stuff to it.

Hub and Spoke

The Hub and Spoke architecture is a strategic design pattern that organizes resources in a centralized “hub” and decentralized “spokes” model. In this framework, the hub serves as a central point for managing and governing shared services, such as security, compliance, and networking, while spokes represent individual business units or projects.

This pattern promotes scalability, efficiency, and easier management. The hub facilitates standardized controls and policies, fostering consistency across the organization. Meanwhile, spokes maintain autonomy, enabling independent development and deployment.

So why do you need to know this?

This is because most of the Azure Tennants are designed like this. Usually the Hub is called Azure Landing Zone and does serveral things like DNS Resolving or keeping the VPN/Express Route to the On Prem Network. Basically everything that needs to work for your whole tennant and not just for your Data Plattform usecase. What I usually see in my proejcts is, that the Data Plattform is one of many Spokes so keep this in mind for your further developments.

Azure Landing Zone

The Azure Landing Zone should contain stuff that your whole company needs to work in Azure. It should manage your whole Azure Network, so it contains e.g. the private DNS Zones, manages the VPN/Express route to your office Network or could also contain a central Key Vault which manages your encryption keys of your Azure ressouces.

Azure Ressource Naming Pattern

Regarding naming of Azure resources check out the guide of Microsoft. I personally prefer to exclude the region from the name. I also recommend to use ‘0’ as seperator, since some ressources don’t accept ‘-‘ in ressource names.

Dynamic Linked Services in Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Synapse Analytics

27/11/2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

recently I’ve had a client with about 50 linked services, which all were pretty similar. A Linked Service in ADF and Synapse serves as a connection configuration to external data sources or services. It includes details like endpoint URLs, connection strings, and authentication credentials. Linked Services support various data stores and platforms, such as databases, file systems, and more.

I’m excited to share the improvements I’ve made to the Linked Services, making them more user-friendly. These enhancements not only simplify the process for me but will also greatly benefit your CI/CD workflows.

First of all, some things that i think are barely documented:

  1. Every Linked Service supports parameters (Some also show them in the GUI but even when they aren’t displayed, they are still supported)
  2. Linked Services allow to retrive information from the Key Vault

If you haven’t set up a Key Vault yet, you’ll need to create one and assign the ‘Key Vault Secrets User’ RBAC role to the system-assigned managed identity of the Synapse Workspace or Azure Data Factory.

Then create a Linked Service to the Key Vault.

Afterwards create a Linked Service for each type (e.g. Storage Account, SQL Server, Oracle, SAP) of source system via GUI, which for example looks something like this:

Check the JSON Code of the Linked Service which will look like this:

{
    "name": "AzureDataLakeStorage",
    "type": "Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/linkedservices",
    "properties": {
        "annotations": [],
        "type": "AzureBlobFS",
        "typeProperties": {
            "url": "https://st0linkedservice.dfs.core.windows.net/"
        },
        "connectVia": {
            "referenceName": "AutoResolveIntegrationRuntime",
            "type": "IntegrationRuntimeReference"
        }
    }
}

and add the “parameters” property and create as many parameters as you need (Since the Storage Account Linked Service has only 1 relevant property only 1 parameter is needed):

{
    "name": "AzureDataLakeStorage",
    "type": "Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/linkedservices",
    "properties": {
        "parameters": {
            "P_StorageAccountURLSecretName": {
                "type": "string"
            }
        },
        "annotations": [],
        "type": "AzureBlobFS",
        "typeProperties": {
            "url": "https://st0linkedservice.dfs.core.windows.net/"
        },
        "connectVia": {
            "referenceName": "AutoResolveIntegrationRuntime",
            "type": "IntegrationRuntimeReference"
        }
    }
}

Now the trick is, to set an URL based on an key vault secret. To do so, create a Key Vault Secret wich contains the url (StorageAccount1URL = https://st0linkedservice.dfs.core.windows.net/) and create another secret with the url for each storage account you want to connect to. (StorageAccount2URL = https://st0linkedservice2.dfs.core.windows.net/).

Go back to the Linked Service JSON Code and insert this JSON Code in each place where you have different content depending on the source system:

{
                "type": "AzureKeyVaultSecret",
                "store": {
                    "referenceName": "AzureKeyVault",
                    "type": "LinkedServiceReference"
                },
                "secretName": "@{linkedService().<ParameterName>}"
            }
        }

So in my example it looks like this:

{
    "name": "AzureDataLakeStorage",
    "type": "Microsoft.Synapse/workspaces/linkedservices",
    "properties": {
        "parameters": {
            "P_StorageAccountURLSecretName": {
                "type": "string"
            }
        },
        "annotations": [],
        "type": "AzureBlobFS",
        "typeProperties": {
            "url": {
                "type": "AzureKeyVaultSecret",
                "store": {
                    "referenceName": "AzureKeyVault",
                    "type": "LinkedServiceReference"
                },
                "secretName": "@{linkedService().P_StorageAccountURLSecretName}"
            }
        },
        "connectVia": {
            "referenceName": "AutoResolveIntegrationRuntime",
            "type": "IntegrationRuntimeReference"
        }
    }
}

Now you have the ability to design Datasets, Pipelines and Mapping Dataflows that intelligently adapt to different systems based on specific rules.

For a seamless CI/CD experience, make sure you’ve got the same Key Vault Secrets set up in each environment, each with its unique content. This ensures smooth coordination, especially when dependent systems operate in different environments.

This post should introduce you to the basic concept of dynamic linked services in Azure Data Factory (ADF) and Azure Synapse Analytics. I hope this post will help you to drastically reduce the number of linked services and integration datasets in your further projects.

Hello world!

27/11/2023 / / 0 Comments

Hello fellow Data Enthusiasts and welcome to my Blog,

I’m Christopher Geckert, a dedicated Data Platform Architect based in Germany. My passion lies in exploring various aspects of the Azure platform, spanning from platform design and configuring intricate setups on Azure to processing data seamlessly. My expertise extends to establishing insightful analyses in Power BI, making data not just accessible but genuinely valuable.

I’m genuinely thrilled to welcome you to be a part of my journey as we navigate through various projects. This adventure is not just about what’s already in progress but also about the excitement of exploring new horizons together.

In this collaborative expedition, we’ll delve into the intricacies of ongoing projects, unraveling the details and seeking opportunities for improvement and innovation. Beyond that, we’ll embark on new ventures, stepping into uncharted territories where curiosity and creativity reign.

Your involvement in this journey is more than just a welcome addition – it’s a vital contribution.

This journey is not just about accomplishing tasks; it’s about shared learning, growth, and making a meaningful impact. Your presence adds depth to our collaborative efforts and I’m genuinely looking forward to the shared discoveries and achievements that await us.

So, buckle up and get ready for an enriching experience. Together, we’ll make this journey one of shared exploration, continuous learning, and collective success. Welcome to the team!

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