Databricks Apps On Aws

[varni]

Context

• Migrating from Azure Databricks (Premium) to AWS Databricks (Premium) in eu‑west‑2 (London) with Unity Catalog attached.

• On Azure, Databricks Apps are available (Compute → Apps and New → App). (ы)

• Goal: run the same Streamlit apps on AWS.

What we observe on AWS

• In all workspaces (customer‑managed VPC via Terraform and Quickstart😞

  • No New → App entry and no Compute → Apps tab;

  • Serverless is available (selectable for notebooks and SQL Warehouses);

  • I’m Account admin and Workspace admin;

  • No “Apps” item/toggle in Admin Settings → Previews at either workspace or account level.

What we tried

1. Created a brand‑new workspace via Quickstart (Databricks‑managed VPC) — same result: Apps missing.

2. REST check (notebook, PAT):

   import requests
   host = "https://" + spark.conf.get("spark.databricks.workspaceUrl")
   token = "<PAT>"
   r = requests.get(f"{host}/api/2.0/apps", headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {token}"})
   print(r.status_code, r.text)

   — AWS: 503 TEMPORARILY_UNAVAILABLE.
   — Azure: 200 OK with the list of Apps.

3. Networking: NAT egress 0.0.0.0/0 is in place; outbound is open. Terraform has nothing that disables Apps.

Hypothesis

• Databricks Apps are not enabled for our AWS account (feature flag not promoted yet). Classic symptoms: missing New → App, /api/2.0/apps returns 503, while serverless is available.

Asks

1. Please confirm that Apps should be available in AWS eu‑west‑2 without any local Preview toggles.

2. If this is an account‑level flag, please enable Databricks Apps for our account/workspaces.

3. Are there any additional prerequisites (e.g., allowing *.databricksapps.com, specific entitlements) beyond Workspace access/Admin access?

Expected after enablement

• New → App and Compute → Apps appear; GET /api/2.0/apps returns 200. We will then create a Streamlit app (Serverless), set Permissions (CAN USE / CAN MANAGE), and grant UC/SQL Warehouse access as needed.

For clarity I attach screenshots:

- screenshot1 - missing New → App on AWS;

- screenshot2 -503 on /api/2.0/apps for AWS vs 200 on Azure;

- screenshot3 - no “Apps” item under Previews on AWS.

[varni · Accepted solution]

[Resolved]. The root cause was that Databricks Apps (including Serverless App) are not available in all AWS regions. My primary workspace was created in eu-west-2 (London), where this feature is not supported.

After creating a new workspace in eu-west-1 (Ireland) — a region where Serverless Apps are supported — the option appeared in the UI and the /api/2.0/apps endpoint started returning 200 instead of 503.

Official Databricks documentation on feature availability by region:
https://docs.databricks.com/aws/en/resources/feature-region-support#serverless-compute-feature-avail...