An Apache Spark-based analytics platform optimized for Azure.
Hi @Umesh Azure , Hope you are doing well.
This error means Unity Catalog can't resolve the Access Connector in your Databricks account context — even when the connector exists in Azure with correct RBAC. Here's the order to check, most likely first.
1. Are you a Databricks account admin? (most common cause on a POC)
Metastore creation happens in the account console at accounts.azuredatabricks.net, and requires the Databricks account admin role. Being an Azure subscription Owner or Contributor does not grant this — they're separate permission systems.
From your workspace, click your username → Manage Account. If it doesn't open or Catalog is unavailable, you're not an account admin yet. The first Azure AD Global Administrator to sign in to the account console can claim the role.
2. Your RBAC on the connector resource
Two distinct permissions are involved, and they're easy to conflate:
- The connector's identity needs
Storage Blob Data Contributoron the ADLS Gen2 account — you likely have this. - You need Contributor (or
Microsoft.Databricks/accessConnectors/read) on the connector resource itself.
Open sd-wt-con → Access control (IAM) → Role assignments and confirm your account is listed. If the connector was created by IaC or a colleague, this is often the gap — and it surfaces as "could not be found" rather than a permission error.
3. Check the Managed Identity ID field
Your error shows Managed Identity ID: empty, which is correct for a system-assigned connector — that field is only for user-assigned identities. If your connector is system-assigned, leave it blank. If you've entered a value there, remove it and retry.
4. Existing metastore in the region
Only one metastore is allowed per region per Databricks account. In the account console under Catalog, check whether one already exists in your region — if so, assign your workspace to it instead of creating a new one.
- If all of the above check out — use the CLI
The Databricks UI sometimes fails to resolve a correctly configured Access Connector, while the CLI/API path succeeds because it bypasses UI-level validation. This has resolved the identical error for other users:
databricks storage-credentials create --json '{
"name": "<credential-name>",
"azure_managed_identity": {
"access_connector_id": "/subscriptions/<sub-id>/resourceGroups/rg-wt-sd/providers/Microsoft.Databricks/accessConnectors/sd-wt-con"
}
}'
For a system-assigned connector, access_connector_id alone is sufficient. If this succeeds, the problem was UI-side, not permissions or identity.
To help narrow it down, could you confirm:
- Can you open Manage Account and reach the Catalog page in the account console?
- Is the connector system-assigned or user-assigned?
- Are the connector, workspace, and storage account in the same region and subscription?
References
- Create a Unity Catalog metastore
- Use Azure managed identities in Unity Catalog to access storage
- Databricks CLI
Start with the account admin check — that's by far the most common cause when this appears during a first POC.
Kind Regards,
Microsoft Support Team.