Azure Databricks Tutorial

In this article, I’ll guide you through a comprehensive, hands-on tutorial that will provide you indepth knowledge on Azure Databricks.

Azure Databricks Tutorial

What is Azure Databricks?

Azure Databricks is Microsoft’s collaborative analytics platform built on Apache Spark, designed specifically for the Microsoft Azure cloud services platform. Think of it as a unified workspace where data engineers, data scientists, and business analysts can collaborate seamlessly on big data and machine learning projects.

Key Components

• Workspace: Your collaborative environment for notebooks, libraries, and experiments
• Clusters: Managed Apache Spark compute resources
• Notebooks: Interactive documents combining code, visualizations, and narrative text
• Jobs: Automated workflows for production data pipelines
• MLflow: Machine learning lifecycle management

Setting Up Your Azure Databricks Environment

Step 1: Creating Your Azure Databricks Workspace

First, let me walk you through setting up your workspace.

Prerequisites:

• Active Azure subscription
• Contributor or Owner permissions on the Azure resource group
• Basic understanding of Azure portal navigation

Creating the Workspace:

Using Azure Portal

1. Navigate to Azure Portal (portal.azure.com)
2. Search for “Databricks” in the top search bar
3. Click “Create” to start the setup wizard
4. Configure basic settings as shown in the screenshot below.

Using Azure CLI

az databricks workspace create --resource-group myresgrp --name company-databricks-workspace --location eastus2 --sku standard

After executing the above Azure CLI script, the workspace has been created successfully.

Step 2: Configuring Network Security (Optional but Recommended)

Network security configuration is crucial:

{
  "customParameters": {
    "enableNoPublicIp": {
      "value": true
    },
    "customVirtualNetworkId": {
      "value": "/subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/{rg-name}/providers/Microsoft.Network/virtualNetworks/{vnet-name}"
    }
  }
}

Method 1: Interactive Data Exploration with Notebooks

Creating Your First Notebook

Once your workspace is ready, let’s create your first notebook.

Step-by-Step Process:

1. Launch Databricks Workspace from the Azure portal
2. Click “New” → “Notebook”
3. Configure notebook settings:
   • Name: “Sales_Analysis_Tutorial”
   • Language: Python
   • Cluster: (We’ll create this next)

Check out the below screenshot for your reference.

Setting Up Your Compute Cluster

# Cluster configuration I recommend for beginners
{
  "cluster_name": "tutorial-cluster",
  "spark_version": "13.3.x-scala2.12",
  "node_type_id": "Standard_DS3_v2",
  "driver_node_type_id": "Standard_DS3_v2",
  "num_workers": 2,
  "autoscale": {
    "min_workers": 1,
    "max_workers": 4
  },
  "auto_termination_minutes": 30
}

Sample