559: What is Liquid Clustering?

Mike & Tommy dive into Liquid Clustering in Microsoft Fabric, breaking down why Runtime 2.0 changes it from an experimental feature into the default table layout strategy for Lakehouse workloads.

They explore how incremental clustering solves the write amplification problems that plagued Runtime 1.3, why file skipping matters for Direct Lake and Power BI report performance, and how teams should think about choosing clustering columns, running OPTIMIZE, and trusting Auto Reclustering without blowing their F-SKU capacity.

Resources: https://milescole.dev/data-engineering/2026/07/24/Incremental-Liquid-Clustering-Fabric-Runtime-2.html, https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Fabric-Updates-Blog/Fabric-Runtime-2-0-Generally-Available/ba-p/5326359, https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/data-engineering/runtime-2-0, https://workingondata.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/fabric-runtime-2-0-is-general-available/

News:

https://www.meetup.com/chicagolandpowerbi/events/315787998/?eventOrigin=group_upcoming_events

https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Fabric-Updates-Blog/Fabric-August-2026-Feature-Summary/ba-p/5325824

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