Complete the Migration

Promotion or cutover to production marks the completion of a workload's migration to Microsoft Fabric. After the asset and all of its dependencies are promoted, production traffic is rerouted. Once rerouted, the previous environment becomes obsolete and can be decommissioned.

The promotion process varies depending on the architecture and the services used, but several consistent prerequisites and common tasks apply. The checklist below reflects these steps with adaptations for Microsoft Fabric workloads.

Migration Window Playbook for Microsoft Fabric

• Send pre-promotion communications
  Notify relevant stakeholders that the cutover process has begun. Ensure that business, operational, and data product teams are informed.

• Validate resources
  Confirm that all Fabric items are functioning:

  • All Lakehouses, Warehouses, KQL Databases, Pipelines, and Dataflows are accessible and operational.
  • All necessary Power BI semantic models are refreshed and accessible to intended audiences.
  • APIs and endpoints (e.g., GraphQL, OData, REST) are active and responding as expected.

• Pause monitoring noise
  Temporarily suppress non-critical alerts during promotion to avoid unnecessary escalation noise. Ensure Fabric Monitoring and Azure Monitor are properly paused and will be resumed post-cutover.

• Take final replication steps (if required)
  For scenarios with upstream replication of data (e.g., via SQL replication or external ingestion flows), ensure final synchronization is complete and consistent.

• Hydrate additional artifacts
  Deploy or rehydrate items that weren't created earlier due to dependency sequencing—such as final Power BI dashboards, Azure Data Factory pipelines, or Microsoft Purview references.

• Turn off source services
  Disable or disconnect upstream connections from legacy systems (on-premises or cloud) to avoid double-ingestion or conflicting writes.

• Perform isolated testing
  Run isolated functionality tests against Fabric items. Use test datasets or test user access patterns where feasible.

• Transition to the migrated workload
  Update routing endpoints, DNS records, API gateways, and Power BI workspace links. Ensure all references are updated to Fabric-native locations.

• Promotion testing
  Rerun your business testing checklist, especially for reports, API outputs, and critical dataflows.

• Seek final go/no-go approval
  Validate success criteria with Data Product Owners, Governance Leads, and Business Sponsors. A formal sign-off might be required in regulated industries.

• Resume monitoring
  Re-enable monitoring policies and verify that everything is operating within expected parameters. Integrate with Microsoft Fabric’s native and Azure-based monitoring systems.

• Communicate success
  Notify the entire team and affected stakeholders that the workload promotion is complete and successful. Include post-migration support instructions if needed.