Databricks Setup

This guide covers setting up Databricks Free Edition for the courses.

Create Account

  1. Go to databricks.com
  2. Click "Try Databricks Free"
  3. Sign up with your email
  4. Verify your account

Workspace Setup

Create Cluster

  1. Navigate to Compute in the sidebar
  2. Click Create Cluster
  3. Select the smallest instance type
  4. Enable auto-termination (15 minutes)

Install Libraries

For Python notebooks:

%pip install mlflow databricks-feature-store

Features Used

Course 3: MLOps

FeaturePurpose
ExperimentsMLflow tracking
CatalogModel registry
JobsPipeline orchestration
SQL WarehousesFeature computation
PlaygroundModel testing

Course 4: GenAI

FeaturePurpose
PlaygroundFoundation Models
Vector SearchSemantic retrieval
GenieAI/BI demo
ExperimentsEvaluation tracking
JobsRAG orchestration

Notebook Conventions

All Databricks notebooks in this repository use:

# Databricks notebook source
# MAGIC %md
# MAGIC # Notebook Title

# COMMAND ----------
# Code cell

Running Labs

  1. Import notebook into Databricks workspace
  2. Attach to running cluster
  3. Run cells sequentially
  4. Complete TODO sections

Troubleshooting

Cluster won't start

  • Check your free tier limits
  • Ensure auto-termination is enabled
  • Try a smaller instance type

MLflow not found

%pip install mlflow --quiet
dbutils.library.restartPython()

Feature Store issues

%pip install databricks-feature-store --quiet
dbutils.library.restartPython()