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

Day 1 — Foundation & Deploy (Commercial CoE)

Track: 5-Day Commercial CoE Workshop · Day 1 of 5 · Foundation & Deploy

Day 1 takes a regulated commercial customer from an empty Azure Commercial subscription to a running CSA Loom Admin Plane plus the first DLZ, deployed by a platform engineer themselves.

Azure-native by default

Loom runs on Azure-native backends (ADLS Gen2 + Delta, Databricks/Synapse, Azure Data Explorer, Azure OpenAI). No Microsoft Fabric capacity is required to run Loom. On Commercial, Fabric is GA — so Day 5 can forward-migrate live, unlike the Federal track.

Learning objectives

  1. Explain the Loom architecture (Admin Plane + DLZ) for a commercial estate.
  2. Verify an Azure Commercial subscription meets Loom's prerequisites.
  3. Deploy the Admin Plane via azd up with the commercial param.
  4. Confirm Unity Catalog managed catalog is wired (commercial primary).
  5. Sign in and confirm the Console is healthy.

Facilitator guide

Timing (8-hour day)

Time Activity Mode
09:00 Kickoff with exec sponsor — business framing, week outcomes Plenary
09:30 Loom architecture (commercial framing) Lecture
10:30 Break —
10:45 Prerequisites verification (roles, subs, Entra group) Lab
11:45 Lunch —
12:45 commercial.bicepparam walkthrough (UC managed, Foundry on) Lab
13:45 azd up Admin Plane deploy (~20-35 min) Lab
14:30 While deploy runs: Setup Wizard + DLZ design Lecture
15:15 Break —
15:30 First DLZ deploy + Console health validation Lab
16:30 Day-1 wrap-up + Day-2 preview Plenary

Talking points

  • Why a regulated commercial customer uses Loom: sovereignty, data-residency, or a preference to keep analytics on owned Azure-native services with a clean 1:1 path to Fabric. Loom is the bridge; Fabric Commercial is the destination (and it is GA today).
  • UC managed primary: on Commercial, the catalog primary is Unity Catalog managed, with a Purview overlay. Contrast with the Federal track (Purview primary).
  • Foundry Agent Service available: on Commercial, Data Agents can use the Foundry Agent Service (GA). Day 4 demonstrates this directly.

Exercises

  1. Each participant states their vertical (HIPAA / FSI / pharma) and the one compliance constraint that brought them to Loom rather than Fabric directly.
  2. Run what-if on the commercial param and read the diff as a group.

Common pitfalls

  • Missing User Access Administrator on the sub → role assignments fail; verify in the prereq lab.
  • Assuming Gov constraints — on Commercial, F-SKU/Power BI, Foundry, and Defender for AI are all available; do not over-restrict.

Participant lab — deploy the Admin Plane

Prerequisites: see the pre-workshop readiness checklist.

  1. Clone + init. 
    git clone https://github.com/fgarofalo56/csa-inabox.git
cd csa-inabox/platform/fiab/azd
azd auth login
azd init
  2. Use the commercial param. Copy platform/fiab/bicep/params/commercial.bicepparam (or commercial-full.bicepparam for everything-on). Set adminEntraGroupId to your Loom Admins group. catalogPrimary = 'unity-catalog-managed' and agentOrchestrator = 'foundry-agent-service' are the commercial defaults. Leave LOOM_DEFAULT_FABRIC_WORKSPACE unset.
  3. Preview. azd provision --preview; review with the facilitator.
  4. Deploy. azd up (~20-35 min).
  5. Sign in + health. Browse to the Console URL, authenticate, confirm Workspaces renders and Monitor → Service health is green (resolve any amber gate it names).

Validation (Day-1 done): Console reachable, signed in, Workspaces renders, first DLZ present, UC managed catalog wired.

Troubleshooting

Symptom Fix
Role-assignment failure Grant User Access Administrator; re-run azd up.
UC catalog not wired Confirm catalogPrimary = 'unity-catalog-managed' and the metastore admin grant ran.

Datasets

Day 1 uses no business data. Synthetic datasets are described in Workshop datasets (CUI-safe synthetic; safe for regulated verticals).

Homework

  • Read the governance overview.
  • Confirm your DLZ networking matches your vertical's policy (public + private mix per customer choice).

Commercial-specific emphasis

  • Commercial baseline, no boundary param gymnastics — one commercial param.
  • UC managed primary catalog from the start.
  • Vertical compliance (HIPAA / SOC 2 / PCI / GDPR / FDA Part 11) framing rather than FedRAMP/IL framing.

Slide deck

make loom-decks DECK=docs/fiab/workshops/5-day-commercial-coe/day-1-foundation.md.