Serverless compute resources in Azure Databricks and Azure SQL can operate independently of your cloud subscription state because they are fully managed, abstracted services that run on infrastructure controlled by Azure rather than your own cloud account’s resources or VNet. This separation leads to the specific behaviors you observed after your Azure account was disabled.
Hosting and Operations
Serverless compute (for Databricks notebooks or SQL Data Warehouse) is hosted in Azure-managed environments, meaning workloads do not require direct provisioning of underlying VMs, clusters, or network resources in your tenant. When your cloud subscription is disabled, all-purpose compute and other tenant-bound services stop functioning because they require access to resources billed directly from your account. However, serverless compute resources are provisioned and orchestrated entirely by Azure Databricks (or SQL serverless), allowing you to continue executing supported actions like code computations and in-memory dataframe manipulations (e.g., df.show()). Actions involving cloud storage or external endpoints (such as writing results or using df.display(), which often requires enhanced UI integration) may be restricted, since those operations require active connections and credentials through your subscription.
Billing Concerns
Billing for serverless compute is handled by Azure’s central managed platform. If your Azure subscription is disabled (due to exhausted credits or payment lapse), you lose the ability to create or manage tenant-based, all-purpose compute resources—these require an active billing relationship with Azure. For serverless compute, billing is usage-based and tracks workloads run on Azure-managed VMs. If your account cannot be billed, further usage of serverless compute should be restricted, or only previously paid/free-tier operations may be allowed. In some cases, you may be able to run workloads temporarily until the account is fully locked, but any new charges will be queued until the subscription is reactivated or the outstanding balance is paid.
If you are continuing to use serverless compute after your account was disabled, you are likely operating in a temporary grace period granted by Azure, during which only platform-managed workloads—not direct cloud resource creation or external writes—can be executed. As soon as the grace period ends or further billing is required, compute will be fully paused.
Summary Table
| Compute Type |
Hosting Location |
Functionality After Account Disabled |
Billing Status |
| All-purpose compute |
User’s Azure cloud resources |
Cannot start or create new resources |
Billing directly from account; stops when disabled |
| Serverless compute |
Azure-managed infrastructure |
Can start & run compute; limited external actions |
Usage metered by Azure; subject to grace period or queued charges |
Azure-managed serverless compute continues to operate with limited functionality after account disablement because its infrastructure is orchestrated independently of your subscription; billing may persist up to the grace-period limit or until account reactivation, and new resource creation is blocked until billing issues are resolved.
