PowerBIMetadataArtifactConnectionCountExceedsLimitException when creating ADLS Gen2 shortcut

[GVun]

We are unable to create new ADLS Gen2 shortcuts in our Bronze Lakehouse. The error we get is PowerBIMetadataArtifactConnectionCountExceedsLimitException in the stored credential operation. We have Bronze, Silver and Gold lakehouses in the same workspace. Bronze has 996 shortcuts with 37 unique ADLS Gen2 connections. Gold has 465 shortcuts with 13 unique ADLS Gen2 connections. The same connection and same connection owner works fine in Gold but fails in Bronze. It also works fine in our PPE environment. All lakehouse properties are identical between Bronze and Gold when compared via API. Neither the UI error nor the underlying error code exists anywhere in public documentation or community forums. Initially we found that existing Bronze connections could still create shortcuts while new connections failed. But now even existing connections are failing and no new shortcuts can be created in Bronze at all regardless of connection. Has anyone seen this error before? Is there an undocumented per-lakehouse credential binding limit? Is there any way to reset a lakehouse credential binding store without going through Microsoft support?

[v-hjannapu · Accepted solution]

Hi @GVun,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.
This issue appears to be caused by the Bronze lakehouse reaching an internal limit related to how connections and stored credentials are handled for that specific artifact. While Microsoft has not officially documented a strict per-lakehouse limit, the error PowerBIMetadataArtifactConnectionCountExceedsLimitException combined with your scenario strongly suggests that the limit is being hit at the lakehouse level rather than the workspace level.

The high number of shortcuts together with multiple unique ADLS Gen2 connections in Bronze explains why new connections started failing first and eventually even existing ones stopped working, while Gold and PPE continue to function since they operate at a lower scale. At present there is no self service way to reset this state, so the recommended approach is to reduce the number of unique connections by reusing a smaller set of credentials, clean up unused shortcuts, and distribute shortcuts across multiple lakehouses to avoid hitting the same limit again. If the lakehouse is already fully blocked, recreating it with a more consolidated connection strategy is the most reliable workaround. 

Hope the above provided information help you resolve the issue, if you have any further concerns or queries, please feel free to reach out to us.
Regards,
Community Support Team.

[v-hjannapu]

Hi @GVun,
I hope the information provided above assists you in resolving the issue. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are here to support you and will be happy to help with any further assistance you may need.

Regards,
Community Support Team.

[GVun]

Thank you for confirming! This aligns exactly with what we found through our testing.

One thing worth noting on the connection consolidation suggestion, we already did a full cleanup and the 37 unique connections in Bronze are genuinely the minimum we need. Each one exists because of different folder-level ACL permissions on the same storage accounts, so we can't reduce them further without broadening access beyond what's intended.

So creating a new Bronze lakehouse for new shortcuts going forward looks like our only real option at this point.

A couple of follow up questions:

- Can Microsoft support reset this internal state for a specific lakehouse without recreating it entirely?
- Could connections from previously deleted shortcuts still be counting toward this internal limit on the backend even if they no longer show up in our queries?
- Is there any way to monitor the number of unique connections per lakehouse proactively so we don't hit this silently again?

[lbendlin]

There are a lot of "1000 items"  restrictions in Fabric, like "1000 items max per workspace" or "a user can own a maximum of 1000 items across workspaces". Seems like you bumped against another one.