Error creating Databricks workspace on AWS (CREATE_FAILED with JSONDecodeError)

Lovebo — Mon, 25 Aug 2025 17:03:04 GMT

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to create a Databricks workspace on AWS by following the official quick start guide:
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/admin/workspace/quick-start

However, my CloudFormation stack fails with the following error:

The resource createWorkspace is in a CREATE_FAILED state
This Custom::CreateWorkspace resource is in a CREATE_FAILED state.
Received response status [FAILED] from custom resource.
Message returned: See the details in CloudWatch Log Stream

Looking into CloudWatch logs, I see this stack trace:

[ERROR] Exception: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)
Traceback (most recent call last😞
...
data = resp.json()
...
simplejson.errors.JSONDecodeError: Expecting value: line 1 column 1 (char 0)

I used my Databricks account ID (GUID format, not the AWS account ID).
The deployment is in us-west-2 (Oregon), specifically AZ us-west-2a.
The error seems to happen when the Lambda function tries to call the Databricks Accounts API, but the response is empty (not JSON).

Has anyone run into this issue before? Any guidance would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Re: Error creating Databricks workspace on AWS (CREATE_FAILED with JSONDecodeError)

BS_THE_ANALYST — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:46:43 GMT

Hi @Lovebo , I'm not too familiar with AWS but happy to have a go at helping.

Let's see if we can rule out some of the more obvious things which are easy to miss on the documentation.

First of all, are you just following the guide through: https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/admin/workspace/quick-start , step by step? You've mentioned the Databricks Accounts API, were you stepping through this? https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/admin/workspace/create-workspace-api ... if you could provide the exact article and the step you reached, that'd be super useful! 🙂

Could we also check some low-hanging resolutions i.e.

1. Quotas

2. Checkbox for cloud formation

It's easy to miss checkboxes etc when settings things up.

@Lovebo if you did manage to solve the problem already, I'd be interested to hear what the resolution was 🤔

All the best,
BS

topic Re: Error creating Databricks workspace on AWS (CREATE_FAILED with JSONDecodeError) in Administration & Architecture

Error creating Databricks workspace on AWS (CREATE_FAILED with JSONDecodeError)

Re: Error creating Databricks workspace on AWS (CREATE_FAILED with JSONDecodeError)