Database Hub in Fabric: one view of your database estate, with a few catches
Database Hub is now in public preview in Microsoft Fabric. What it does, what it needs, and what to check before you try it.
At SQLCon Europe in Barcelona, Microsoft announced that Database Hub in Microsoft Fabric is now in public preview. It is a single place to see the health of your databases across Azure, Fabric and on-premises, without moving any data into Fabric.
If you run more than a handful of SQL databases, this matters. Most of us already juggle the Azure portal, SSMS, a monitoring tool and a spreadsheet of what lives where. Database Hub is Microsoft's attempt to put the first look in one spot.
It is a preview, and the documentation is open about the limits. So here is what it does, and what to check before you spend an afternoon on it.
What Database Hub is
Database Hub is a view over your existing database estate. Your databases stay in their current subscriptions, resource groups and regions. The hub reads inventory and monitoring signals and shows them together.
The main pages are:
- Overview, which points out what needs attention.
- Estate, a cross-engine inventory where issues and suggestions are shown per resource, sorted by the number of open issues.
- Performance, an estate-level view of real-time and historical performance.
You can save a filtered Estate view and share it with colleagues. Sharing a view shares the configuration, not access. Everyone still only sees what their own permissions allow.
The supported list during the preview includes Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance, SQL database in Fabric, SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc, SQL Server on Azure VMs, Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server and Azure Cosmos DB.
Agents, with a human in the loop
The documentation also describes agent skills for Database Hub, published in the Microsoft SQL GitHub repository. The idea is that you can ask questions such as which databases need attention, and get a structured investigation back.
Microsoft is careful here, and I think that is the right tone. Agent findings need operator review, and agents do not replace RBAC, approvals or change management. Start with investigation and summaries. Leave automated actions until you have defined permissions, validation and rollback.
The catches in the preview
This is where the documentation is more useful than the announcement. A few things to know:
- A Fabric admin has to enable the tenant setting "Users can access the Database hub (preview)".
- You need at least the Reader role on each Azure subscription you want to monitor.
- For Microsoft SQL resources, you have to register an Azure resource provider in each subscription before they show up in the Estate view.
- For Azure SQL Database, performance data only starts flowing after you enable performance monitoring on the database, which adds an extended property.
- The Performance page supports Azure SQL Database, SQL Server on Azure VMs and SQL Server enabled by Azure Arc. Azure SQL Managed Instance, elastic pools and SQL database in Fabric show up in Estate but not yet in Performance.
- Mirrored databases and Fabric Data Warehouse are not supported.
One catch is easy to miss, and it matters if you are in Denmark. The documentation says Database Hub does not currently support Fabric capacities in North Europe or West Europe. If your My workspace sits on a capacity in either region, the Overview page might load but you can hit errors. You need to assign My workspace to a capacity in a supported region. The limit applies to the capacity that hosts the experience, not to where your databases are.
The good news is cost. Database Hub is available with a Fabric Free license, and you do not need Fabric capacity or a separate license to get started.
What this means for you
I would not roll this out as your monitoring strategy. It does not aim to replace specialised tools, and Microsoft says so in the FAQ. Advanced diagnostics still happen in native tools, and the hub routes you there.
What it does well is the first question: where should I look first? That is useful for consultants, small platform teams and anyone inheriting an estate they did not build.
A sensible way to try it:
- Ask your Fabric admin to enable the preview tenant setting.
- Check which region your My workspace capacity is in.
- Pick one non-critical subscription and register the resource provider there.
- Enable performance monitoring on two or three test databases.
- Compare what the hub flags with what you already know about those databases.
Step five is the real test. If the hub confirms what you know and surfaces one thing you did not, it earns a place in your routine. If it only shows noise, you have lost an afternoon, not a project.
Takeaway
After two decades in data, I have learned to treat any new "single pane of glass" with healthy suspicion. This one is early, but it is free to try, it reads your estate in place, and the documentation is honest about what is missing.
Have you looked at Database Hub yet, and which part of your estate would you point it at first?
Sources
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