Step 02 of 9 3-4 weeks· advanced
Step 2: Target Architecture Design
Make the Fabric vs Synapse vs Hybrid call. Design the lakehouse (medallion). Decide storage layout, compute strategy, orchestration, consumption layer, and governance — then capture as ADRs.
Recommended prompts
Use one of these to do the work in your IDE
Open the template to read it in full. Click Copy prompt to grab it (with your stack values pre-filled where they apply) — then paste into Claude Code, Cursor, or wherever you build.
Recommended skills
Drop these into Claude Code for this phase
Skills auto-trigger on the right kind of request. Install once; they apply to every prompt that fits.
Recommended MCP configs
Wire these tools into Claude Code first
MCP servers give Claude Code direct access to external systems (Jira, browsers, databases). Configure once.
When you're done
Verify these in your own work before moving on
This is a checklist for you to mentally tick off in your repo and IDE — the site doesn't track it, you do.
- Target platform decided (Fabric / Synapse / Hybrid) with rationale
- Lakehouse architecture documented (medallion: Bronze / Silver / Gold)
- Storage layout decided
- Compute strategy decided
- Orchestration tool decided
- Consumption layer planned
- Governance approach decided
- 10-15 ADRs documenting key decisions
- High-level architecture diagram
Common pitfalls
What goes wrong at this step
- "We'll just use Fabric for everything" without analysis — Fabric is excellent for many cases but isn't always the right choice
- Premature microservices for data — distributed data is harder than distributed apps
- Skipping governance design — adding it later is much harder
- No PII strategy — surfaces during compliance audit at the worst time
- Synapse SQL pool sizing decided once, never revisited — costs explode silently