Changes to the Default Tenant Setting value for SQL Database

Another post on my favorite topic: Governance and Administration!

With all the Fabric announcements in the last months, some of the Admin announcements might have slipped through. As you might know, the Admin part of Fabric is dear to my heart. I've posted about it earlier here, here, here, and here, to name a few 😀.

So in the next weeks I am going to highlight a few things with short, informative posts.

I decided to leave "Governance & Administration" out of the titles of my blog posts from now on.
The titles were getting a bit lengthy, just because I wanted to include the focus on Governance & Administration. I am already using labels which you can use for that: Governance, Administration, etc..

UPDATE 2025-03-12:

Microsoft released an update on the rollout of the changes to this setting. The actual enablement is postponed for 20 days to March 28. The timelines mentioned in the blog below are now:

• February 28, 2025 - Checkbox notification rolled out globally.
• March 8, 2025 -  Infobox will display this as the enablement date.
• March 28, 2025 - Actual enablement date for tenants that take no action.

Extending flexibility: default checkbox changes on tenant settings for SQL database in Fabric

Microsoft 365 Message Center

In case you have access to the M365 Admin Center, or more specific the M365 Message Center, you might have seen this message. I reckon not many people did.. That's why I'm blogging about it here 😁

I'm specifically talking about this message in the Message Center, being a major update and with admin impact: 

Communications on default checkbox changes on tenant settings and billing start for SQL database in Fabric.

Changes to SQL Database Tenant Setting

Recently, there's been a change to the tenant setting for SQL Database, but only in case you haven't changed the setting before.. 😉

Below is the setting in my own tenant, where the setting is still disabled, which was and still is the default option (hint: this is about to change!).

So if I do nothing, then after March 8, the default value will change to ON, or Enabled for the entire organization.

If I decide to opt out before March 8, so if I uncheck the checkbox Accept Microsoft's default selection (Off for the entire organization), this tenant setting will stay disabled, also after March 8.

To be clear, as I mentioned, you only see this message if you haven't changed the default setting (off).

In the Powerdobs tenant we already enabled SQL Database, so I only see the below:

M365 Message Center for Non-Admins

In case you don't have access to the Message Center, I found another site, called the Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive, where all those messages are replicated, set up by Merill Fernando, Principal Product Manager for Microsoft Entra.

Direct link to the message: https://mc.merill.net/message/MC996579.

I have been searching for a (regular) blog post on this topic, but I haven't seen anything:
Multiple other blog posts were written on the Fabric blog, but none of them explicitly mentioned any of this:

• Feb 12: Govern your data in SQL database in Microsoft Fabric with protection policies in Microsoft Purview
  
• Feb 19: Enhancing SQL database in Fabric: share your feedback and shape the future
  
• Feb 26: Why SQL database in Fabric is the best choice for low-code/no-code Developers
• There's a little link to Billing and utilization reporting for SQL database hidden in this blog post, which explains billing started at February 1st, but no mention of the tenant setting

Billing for SQL Database (preview)

Last thing I want to explicitly call out in accordance with the changed tenant setting:

While SQL Database in Fabric is still in preview, billing already started at February 1. Furthermore, billing for backup starts after April 1.

So when the setting is changed to ON, and you don't run a trial, you can start seeing SQLDbNative on your Capacity Metrics App as explained here. 😉