To enable a Fabric Shortcut to access an Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 account behind a firewall, which initial step is required?

• A. Create a Fabric workspace identity
• B. Assign permission to Workspace identity
• C. Allow for Firewall rule
• D. Create a data lake access policy

Answer: (A)

Access to a Data Lake Storage Gen2 account behind a firewall from Fabric Shortcuts starts with establishing a Fabric workspace identity. Fabric uses a service identity tied to the workspace to authenticate to external resources; without this identity, there’s nothing for the storage account to authorize or to whitelist in the firewall. So the first step is to create the Fabric workspace identity. Once that identity exists, you can grant it the needed permissions on the data lake and configure firewall rules to allow access from Fabric. A data lake access policy can define detailed permissions, but it relies on having the identity in place first.