Your data, your storage, your rules: a 2026 guide to storing Unity Catalog managed tables

This post details how Databricks' Unity Catalog is evolving to give users more control over the storage location of managed tables. It introduces the ability to specify separate storage locations for managed tables, moving beyond default configurations. The post outlines the process of converting existing tables to managed status with user-defined storage and discusses the implications of this control for data residency, compliance, and cost management. It emphasizes that while users control storage, the underlying data remains managed by Databricks.