Skip to content
CSA Loom — the Microsoft Fabric experience for Azure tenants where Fabric isn't yet available: lakehouses, warehouses, notebooks, semantic models, Activator rules, Data Agents, across Commercial, GCC, GCC-High, and DoD IL5

Forward migration to Microsoft Fabric

The strategic anchor of CSA Loom. When Microsoft Fabric reaches your audit boundary, forward-migrate your workloads with minimal rewrite.

When to migrate

Trigger conditions: - Microsoft Fabric reaches your audit boundary GA (FedRAMP High / IL4 / IL5) - Your customer has F-SKU Fabric capacity available - You've completed Loom v1 stabilization (not mid-deployment)

Verify via Azure Government product GA roadmap + subscribe to the Fabric Blog Gov announcements channel.

Migration matrix

Per ADR fiab-0012:

Loom artifact Fabric equivalent Migration mechanism Effort
ADLS Gen2 Delta tables OneLake Delta tables OneLake shortcut → zero data movement Low
Loom workspaces Fabric workspaces Re-create with same name/domain; bind to same Git folder Low
Loom Domains Fabric Domains Domain metadata exports to JSON; Fabric Domains API import Low
Loom Mirroring configs (Debezium-based) Fabric Mirroring Per-source case-by-case; switch when Fabric Mirroring covers source Variable
Loom Activator rules Fabric Reflex / Data Activator JSON export → Reflex import; rule primitives mostly map 1:1 Low-Medium
Loom Data Agents Fabric Data Agents Agent config JSON → Fabric Data Agents REST API Low
Direct-Lake-Shim semantic models Direct Lake on OneLake Re-author TMDL for Direct Lake on OneLake storage mode Medium
Databricks notebooks Fabric Spark notebooks Git folder port; rebuild deps for Fabric Spark runtime Medium
dbt models dbt in Fabric Data Factory dbt-fabric adapter; change connection string Low
Synapse Serverless tables Fabric Warehouse Re-create as Warehouse tables; T-SQL DDL ports Medium
Databricks SQL Warehouse tables Fabric Warehouse Re-create; UC tables → Fabric items Medium
ADX databases / KQL queries Fabric Eventhouse Same engine; databases attach as Eventhouse Low
Power BI semantic models Power BI in Fabric Already in Power BI Premium; rebind to OneLake shortcut Low
Purview catalog Fabric Purview Same engine; Fabric items auto-register Zero

Migration tooling — fiab-migrate CLI (v1.1)

# 1. Snapshot the Loom estate
fiab-migrate snapshot \
  --admin-plane-sub-id <SUB-A> \
  --output ./loom-state.json

# 2. Plan migration to target Fabric capacity
fiab-migrate plan \
  --snapshot ./loom-state.json \
  --target-fabric-tenant <TENANT> \
  --target-capacity F128 \
  --output ./migration-plan.json

# 3. Execute the plan
fiab-migrate execute \
  --plan ./migration-plan.json \
  --dry-run    # or --commit

# 4. Verify
fiab-migrate verify \
  --plan ./migration-plan.json

The plan output flags per-item migration verdict (Direct / Manual / Skip) so customer can prioritize.

OneLake shortcut as the data-movement bridge

For Delta tables, forward migration is zero data movement:

  1. Create OneLake shortcut from Fabric workspace pointing at the existing Loom ADLS Gen2 lakehouse path
  2. Data is queryable from Fabric workloads immediately
  3. Customer optionally promotes data into native OneLake paths later via copy (incremental, customer-paced)

Side-by-side run pattern

Most customers run Loom and Fabric side-by-side for N weeks during transition:

  1. Migrate semantic models + Power BI reports first (lowest risk; highest user-visibility)
  2. Keep Loom Activator + Mirroring + Direct-Lake-Shim running for workloads not yet migrated
  3. Migrate workloads piecemeal — pipeline-by-pipeline, dashboard-by- dashboard
  4. Validate parallel-run results (KQL query against both systems; diff results)
  5. After ~30-90 days of clean side-by-side, decommission Loom components per workload

Decommissioning Loom (after migration complete)

  • Loom Console: stop the Container App / AKS workload; tear down RG
  • Loom Mirroring Engine: stop CDC connectors; verify Fabric Mirroring covers all sources
  • Loom Activator Engine: confirm all rules migrated to Reflex; stop service
  • Loom Direct-Lake-Shim: stop service (Direct Lake handles freshness natively in Fabric)
  • Loom Data Agents: confirm migrated to Fabric Data Agents; stop extension service
  • ADLS Gen2 lakehouses: keep (now accessed via OneLake shortcut from Fabric)
  • Catalog (Purview / UC): keep — Fabric uses the same Purview

Reverse migration (Fabric → Loom)

Less common but legitimate (customer pilots in Fabric Commercial, moves to Gov). See Upgrade & migration.

Commitments

Loom commits: - OneLake shortcut path remains stable across Loom versions - dbt models port unchanged (no Loom-specific extensions) - TMDL semantic-model format is canonical - Activator rule JSON schema is published - fiab-migrate CLI ships in v1.1 — included in standard support