As of April 20th, 2026, BigLake is now called Lakehouse. BigLake metastore is now called the Lakehouse runtime catalog. Lakehouse APIs, client libraries, CLI commands, and IAM names remain unchanged and still reference BigLake.
Troubleshoot cross-cloud data access for Databricks Unity Catalog
Stay organized with collections
Save and categorize content based on your preferences.
This page shows you how to troubleshoot background metadata refresh for
cross-cloud data access with Databricks Unity Catalog. For general cross-cloud
data access troubleshooting, such as connectivity and routing over private
interconnects, see Troubleshoot cross-cloud data access.
Tables are empty or not discovered during refresh
If the catalog background metadata refresh indicates success (such as
Refresh successfully completed), but tables in the federated catalog do not
appear or listing tables returns 0 items, check the following:
EXTERNAL USE SCHEMA privilege: Verify that the Databricks Service
Principal has been granted the EXTERNAL USE SCHEMA privilege on the target
schemas or catalog in Unity Catalog. Without this privilege, background
metadata refresh and credential vending for queries will fail.
External data access setting: Verify that External data access is
enabled on the Databricks Unity Catalog metastore.
External location: Verify that the Databricks Unity Catalog and tables
use an external storage location (such as Cloud Storage or Amazon S3)
rather than default storage.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2026-10-24 UTC."],[],[]]
