topic Re: Does liquid clustering preserve auditable tenant separation in a shared Delta table architecture in Data Engineering

Does liquid clustering preserve auditable tenant separation in a shared Delta table architecture?

batch_bender — Sun, 24 May 2026 09:29:18 GMT

We’re evaluating a multi-tenant Databricks architecture and considering Liquid Clustering on shared Delta tables. Our concern is that tenant SLAs require data separation for audit/compliance purposes.

I’m trying to understand whether Liquid Clustering is compatible with environments where tenant data must remain demonstrably isolated, or whether this becomes a logical-vs-physical isolation issue that would require separate tables/catalogs/storage per tenant.

Has anyone dealt with this tradeoff in practice?

Re: Does liquid clustering preserve auditable tenant separation in a shared Delta table architecture

balajij8 — Sun, 24 May 2026 11:55:21 GMT

Liquid Clustering aims to maximize read throughput and minimize data skew. It is critical not to combine performance optimization aspect-based features with security boundaries when designing for strict regulatory compliance cases.

You can follow the pattern of Catalog per tenant or Schema per tenant as they are bound to distinct storage locations via Unity Catalog.

You can enable Liquid Clustering inside each tenant's isolated tables (under Catalog/Schema) to maintain performance & SLAs but using it as a mechanism to achieve tenant separation is a bad practice leading to compliance issues.

Re: Does liquid clustering preserve auditable tenant separation in a shared Delta table architecture

batch_bender — Sun, 24 May 2026 12:18:34 GMT

If partitioning by tenant is considered acceptable for our audit/SLA requirements, would Liquid Clustering be viewed differently, or are they both effectively storage-layout optimizations rather than true isolation boundaries?