topic Re: Unity Catalog not detected until I manually restarted the cluster in Data Engineering

Unity Catalog not detected until I manually restarted the cluster

Dharshan15 — Thu, 31 Jul 2025 06:55:31 GMT

I just spent a lot of time setting up Unity Catalog with external locations, access connectors, and all the right permissions. My cluster had Dedicated access mode, Unity Catalog has been assigned properly, and everything was configured correctly. But when I tried using SELECT CURRENT_METASTORE() or accessing external locations, I kept getting this error:[OPERATION_REQUIRES_UNITY_CATALOG] Operation CURRENT_METASTORE requires Unity Catalog enabled. I double checked everything like roles, credentials, permissions but all seemed fine. Turns out, I just needed to restart the cluster manually. After that, everything worked perfectly. It would be great if Databricks showed a warning or hint to restart the cluster when Unity Catalog isn’t recognized, especially for new setups. Has anyone else faced this?

Re: Unity Catalog not detected until I manually restarted the cluster

Advika — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 15:10:56 GMT

Appreciate you posting this, @Dharshan15! It’s something that can easily be overlooked.
After enabling Unity Catalog, the cluster needs to be restarted for the changes to take effect.

You can also share this feedback directly with the Databricks team from your workspace.

Re: Unity Catalog not detected until I manually restarted the cluster

Dharshan15 — Fri, 01 Aug 2025 15:29:23 GMT

Thank you @Advika ,I will share it with the databricks team as mentioned. I just joined as a Data Engineer (fresher) and I have been learning databricks for more than a week now. Excited to learn more.