Explanation Linked services are much like connection strings, which define the connection information needed for Data Factory to connect to external resources. Reference: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/enable-customer-managed-key https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/concepts-linked-services https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/create-self-hosted-integration-runtime