In our platform, one of the first questions we answered was: what is a project in Unity Catalog? That decision shaped every later governance and onboarding choice.
One of the biggest surprises in our Unity Catalog migration was how much of the design depended on product limits. If you do not know which limits are soft and which are fixed, you can build a design that stops before it starts.
The most surprising part of our Databricks migration was this: without previews, we would not have finished. The features we used were not in plain sight, but they were the only path through several blockers.
This was the one part of the migration where the word “catalog” almost hid the real work. We were not just moving metadata; we were rebuilding a platform with Azure Landing Zone thinking and Unity Catalog governance baked in.
We spent the last two and a half years building a new Azure data platform from scratch using the Data Landing Zone approach. After migrating thousands of workloads and managing dozens of subscriptions, I thought it would be useful to share what actually worked, what we did differently, and the honest answer to the question: would I do it again?
In this SQLDay 2025 session, we explore the realities of migrating enterprise Databricks environments to Unity Catalog.
Here is long-overdue and my promised top 20 Azure Logic Apps tips & tricks
