topic Re: Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute in Data Engineering

Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute

mac_delvalle — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 18:20:46 GMT

Hi everyone,

We’re in the process of migrating from all-purpose clusters to serverless compute in Databricks. On our all-purpose clusters, we’ve been setting specific Spark configurations (e.g., via the cluster’s advanced options). However, we’ve noticed that serverless compute doesn’t expose the same “Advanced Options” UI for Spark config overrides.

Is there a recommended way to apply custom Spark configurations when using serverless compute? Ideally, we’d like to apply these settings at cluster start or job submission time.

Any guidance or best practices would be greatly appreciated!

Below are the configs we are setting:

Overwrite partitions:

spark.sql.sources.partitionOverwriteMode dynamic

Remove default files written (_started, _SUCCESS, _committed):

mapreduce.fileoutputcommitter.marksuccessfuljobs false
parquet.enable.summary-metadata false
spark.sql.sources.commitProtocolClass org.apache.spark.sql.execution.datasources.SQLHadoopMapReduceCommitProtocol

Thanks,
Mac

Re: Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute

szymon_dybczak — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 18:34:23 GMT

Hi @mac_delvalle ,

I'm afraid that when it comes to serverless compute your options are kind of limited.Severless compute does not support setting most Spark properties for notebooks or job. According to following documentation entry: "Severless compute does not support setting most Spark properties for notebooks or job"

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/databricks/spark/conf#configure-spark-properties-for-serverless-notebooks-and-jobs

Re: Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute

mac_delvalle — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 15:00:09 GMT

Thank you for your reply. Hopefully they add this functionality in the future.

Re: Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute

nayan_wylde — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 15:09:36 GMT

I think you will not be able to set spark configurations in cluster in serverless. But you can put this in notebook.

spark.conf.set( "spark.sql.sources.partitionOverwriteMode", "dynamic" )

Re: Add Spark Configurations Serverless Compute

szymon_dybczak — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 15:32:46 GMT

Hi @mac_delvalle ,

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