Starter
One small team building everything, where speed matters more than governance.
Read the patternGuide ยท Last reviewed: September 2026
Fabric workspace architecture patterns
How you organise workspaces affects who can access what, how you manage capacity costs, how complex deployments get, and how independently teams can work.
The decision this guide helps make
There is no single correct topology. The right choice depends on team size, governance requirements, and how many distinct groups need to consume the data. What works for one small central team stops working once several teams need different access to the same data.
The four patterns below run from simplest to most distributed. Each is the natural next step once the one before it breaks down, so the useful question is not which is best, but which one your constraints have already pushed you towards.
Choose a pattern
| Situation | Choose this pattern | Why it fits |
|---|---|---|
| A team of three or four builds the pipelines, models, and reports themselves | Starter | No cross-workspace overhead while you learn your real usage patterns |
| Engineers and analysts need different access, and reports ship on their own cycle | Split | The workspace boundary matches the team boundary, so ownership is explicit |
| Finance, Marketing and Operations each want their own reporting space | Hub and spoke | Each team gets its own reporting space and shares one engineering layer |
| Each domain has its own budget, data team, and delivery priorities | Domain mesh | Each domain moves at its own pace without queueing behind a central team |
Patterns in detail
Split
Engineers and analysts who need separate access, capacity, and release cycles.
Read the patternHub and spoke
One platform team serving several consuming teams from a shared Gold layer.
Read the patternDomain mesh
Domains that own their own engineering and set their own pace.
Read the patternPractical next step
Changing topology later means moving items, re-pointing shortcuts and semantic models, and redoing security. It is worth a second opinion before you commit. If you are weighing two of these against real governance and access requirements, an assessment can test the decision against your own data.
Talk it through