1. Get Started
Starter Journey is your roadmap for setting up Databricks the right way.
All about data
Get the data foundation right first. Every dashboard, ML model, and agent reads from the same tables. When those tables are wrong, everything downstream is wrong: reports mislead, models train on noise, agents hallucinate.
BI, ML, and GenAI have different requirements from that data, but all three share the same platform and the same catalog. Fix the foundation once and it serves all three.
This guide is the minimum steps, in order, from an empty account to a working production environment.
What you'll build
Each section starts where the last one left off, taking you from an empty Databricks account to a production-ready environment:
| # | Section | What you'll have when done |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Before you start - Foundations - Cloud tenant ready | A clear understanding of workspaces, Unity Catalog, and your cloud tenant model |
| 3 | Infra setup | Workspaces provisioned, users and groups added, SSO activated |
| 4 | Cost monitoring | Day-zero visibility: imported usage dashboard, optional packaged dashboards, tags, and account budgets |
| 5 | Governance strategy | A catalog/schema structure that fits your organization's size |
| 6 | Access your data | Cloud storage connected, external systems accessible via managed connectors |
| 7 | Build the first ETL pipeline | A working medallion pipeline (bronze → silver → gold) |
| 8 | Query and explore | Interactive SQL queries running against your lakehouse data |
| 9 | Unified analytics | KPIs defined as Unity Catalog metric views; dashboards, Genie Spaces, and apps surfacing data to business users |
| 10 | Predictive analytics | Models trained, saved to Unity Catalog, and scored in batch |
| 11 | Agents | AI agents built on your data |
| 12 | Orchestration using jobs | The pipeline running on a schedule with retries and notifications |
| 13 | Data access control | Row, column, and object-level access controls on your catalog |
| 14 | CI/CD and DevOps | Projects version-controlled and deployed with DABs and CI/CD |
Work through the sidebar in order, or jump straight to the topic you need.