NHS Secure Data Environment service announcements and outages

A new way to manage data assets across Databricks workspaces is being introduced in the NHS England SDE at the beginning of October 2025.  

Unity Catalog will replace the existing Hive Metastore in the SDE and offer improved performance and tooling.  

Users will be notified of when the transition to Unity Catalog will start and when planned downtime will occur.

When Unity Catalog is activated within the SDE, users will need to: 

1. Update existing scripts. 
2. Re-point scheduled jobs, workflows and notebooks to the new Unity Catalog cluster. 

We have provided guidance on updating existing scripts and re-pointing to the new Unity Catalog cluster.

For help with updating scripts, drop-in sessions are available to all SDE users for support with the SDE environment. These regular sessions are held by the SDE data specialist team every week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 10am to 11am (excluding public holidays) via Microsoft Teams. 

You do not need to book to attend. Session invitations are sent with SDE user account activation emails. Alternatively, contact [email protected] with the subject heading 'Unity Catalogue upgrade' for more information.