Get started with Azure Databricks

If you’re new to Azure Databricks, you’ve found the place to start. This section includes instructions for basic account setup, a tour of the Databricks workspace UI, and some basic tutorials related to exploratory data analysis and ETL on Azure Databricks.

For information about online training resources, see Get free Databricks training.

Create an Azure Databricks workspace

Databricks recommends you deploy your first Azure Databricks workspace using the Azure portal. You can also deploy Azure Databricks with one of the following options:

• Azure CLI
• Powershell
• ARM template
• Bicep

Note

When you create your Azure Databricks workspace, you can select the Trial (Premium - 14-Days Free DBUs) pricing tier to give the workspace access to free Premium Azure Databricks DBUs for 14 days.

Before you begin

• You must have an Azure subscription that isn’t a Free Trial Subscription. If you have a free account, complete the following steps:
  • Go to your profile and change your subscription to pay-as-you-go. See Azure free account.
  • Remove the spending limit.
  • Request a quota increase for vCPUs in your region.
• Sign in to the Azure portal.
• You must be an Azure Contributor or Owner, or the Microsoft.ManagedIdentity resource provider must be registered in your subscription. To register the Microsoft.ManagedIdentity resource provider, you must have a custom role with permissions to do the /register/action operation. For more information, see Azure resource providers.

Use the portal to create an Azure Databricks workspace

1. In the Azure portal, select Create a resource > Analytics > Azure Databricks.

2. Under Azure Databricks Service, provide the values to create a Databricks workspace.

   Property	Description
   Workspace name	Provide a name for your Databricks workspace
   Subscription	From the drop-down, select your Azure subscription.
   Resource group	Specify whether you want to create a new resource group or use an existing one. A resource group is a container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. For more information, see Azure Resource Group overview.
   Location	Select West US 2. For other available regions, see Azure services available by region.
   Pricing Tier	Choose between Standard, Premium, or Trial. For more information on these tiers, see Databricks pricing page.

3. Select Review + Create, and then Create. The workspace creation takes a few minutes. During workspace creation, you can view the deployment status in Notifications. Once this process is finished, your user account is automatically added as an admin user in the workspace.

Note

When a workspace deployment fails, the workspace is still created in a failed state. Delete the failed workspace and create a new workspace that resolves the deployment errors. When you delete the failed workspace, the managed resource group and any successfully deployed resources are also deleted.

Next steps

Your next steps depend on whether you want to continue setting up your account organization and security or want to start building out data pipelines:

• Connect your Databricks workspace to external data sources. See Connect to data sources.

• Ingest your data into the workspace. See Ingest data into a Databricks lakehouse.

• Onboard data to your workspace in Databricks SQL. See Load data using streaming tables in Databricks SQL.

• Build out your account organization and security. See Get started with Azure Databricks administration.

• Learn about managing access to data in your workspace. See What is Unity Catalog?.

• Learn about managing access to workspace objects like notebooks, compute, dashboards, queries. See Access control lists.

Get help

• If you have any questions about setting up Azure Databricks and need live help, please e-mail onboarding-help@databricks.com.

• If your organization does not have a Azure Databricks support subscription, or if you are not an authorized contact for your company’s support subscription, you can get answers to many questions in Databricks Office Hours or from the Databricks Community.

• If you need additional help, sign up for a live weekly demo to ask questions and practice alongside Databricks experts. Or, follow this blog series on best practices for managing and maintaining your environments.