Accelerating Data Movement by using Fast Copy to unlock performance and efficiency during data ingestion from SQL database in Fabric

• Databases
• Fabric platform
• Microsoft Fabric

• September 3, 2025 by Sukhwant kaur 23,176 Views

Accelerating Data Movement: Leveraging Fast Copy Feature in Dataflow to ingest SQL database faster. Unlocking Performance and Efficiency for Modern Data Workloads.

The Fast Copy feature in Dataflow is designed to dramatically reduce data movement latency. It minimizes data movement latency primarily through bulk loading and parallel processing by dividing large datasets into manageable chunks. This parallelism not only shortens the overall copy duration but also makes efficient use of both source and destination compute resources.

Now, the Fast Copy capability can also be used to ingest large volume data from SQL database.

Note: Fast Copy can use SQL database as a source only.

Implementing Fast Copy in Dataflow

Step1 – Create a new data flow by selecting Dataflow Gen2 item.

Step 2 – Select options icon.

Step 3 – Selecting the Options icon would show a popup like the image below. From the left menu select Scale under Dataflow and make sure ‘Allow use of fast copy connectors’ check box is checked.

Step 4 – Select a SQL database as source and OneLake for destination to build your data flow.

Step 5 – Publish and Run Dataflow.

Note: Dataflow automatically switch to Fast copy when data size exceeds 100MB or 1 million rows.

To force the use of Fast Copy where the data is not 100MB or 1million rows, select the ‘Require fast copy’ option by right clicking the query.

Step 6 – Navigate to Refresh history for Dataflow to verify if fast copy was used successfully. Select the start time for the run.

Select an activity from Activities list.

Screenshot example – ‘CopyActivity’ which means this data movement used Fast Copy.

Screenshot example – ‘Allow use of fast copy connectors’ disabled. Engine shows ‘-‘ which means Dataflow didn’t use Fast Copy.

The Fast Copy feature in Dataflow reduces data movement latency and enables high-throughput, low-touch migrations. If your organization is striving for operational excellence and analytics at the speed of business, now is the time to explore Fast Copy in your Dataflow pipelines—and experience the future of data integration today.

To learn more, refer to the Fast copy in Dataflow Gen2 documentation.