ADF pipeline stuck at "Queued" status around 5 hours.

Yuanbo Lin 60 Reputation points Microsoft Employee
2026-04-15T03:19:34.94+00:00

In our ADF, there have some jobs stuck at running status around 4 hours, the job normally should finish around 20 minutes

Before I cancel the job, the "LookupLatestFile" step is stuck in "Queued" status, around 5 hours.

Azure Data Factory
Azure Data Factory

An Azure service for ingesting, preparing, and transforming data at scale.

Answer accepted by question author
Manoj Kumar Boyini 19,595 Reputation points Moderator
2026-04-15T04:12:04.5466667+00:00

Hi @Yuanbo Lin

If your Data Factory Copy activity is stuck in a "Queued" status and not progressing, it usually means the activity is waiting for available compute resources, typically from the Integration Runtime (IR). Since you mentioned it was working earlier, here are a few things you can check:

Check Concurrency Limits - If your pipeline has a concurrency policy or if previous runs are still in progress, new runs may be blocked. Go to the Monitor tab in ADF and cancel any older or stuck pipeline runs if needed.

Integration Runtime Resource Availability - The queued status often means your IR (Azure or Self-hosted) is busy or at capacity. Go to Manage > Integration Runtimes and check:

Is the IR running and healthy?

Are there many concurrent activities consuming the IR?

Transient or Regional Issues - Sometimes, temporary platform or network issues may cause delays. These are usually resolved automatically, but it can help to retry the pipeline after a few minutes.

Too many parallel activities - Too many parallel activities in your pipeline, this can lead to resource contention and cause queuing.

Large or Complex Workloads - If you're copying large datasets or running many activities in parallel, it might delay resource allocation. Try breaking the workload into smaller chunks to improve performance.

XML Format Edge Case (if applicable) - If you're working with XML data, there’s a known issue where complex or inconsistent array structures in XML can cause the Copy activity to hang. If this applies to you, you might need to preprocess or flatten the XML first.

I hope this information helps. Please do let us know if you have any further queries.

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  1. Nandan Hegde 36,966 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-04-15T11:23:15.25+00:00

    Fabric data pipelines are similar to ADF and might utilize the scope underlying scope.

    https://community.fabric.microsoft.com/t5/Fabric-platform/Excessive-queueing-of-pipeline-activities/m-p/5148459#M27123

    There has been the same issue for data pipelines in Fabric in UK South region which MSFT had acknowledged.

    Are you still seeing the same issue?

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  2. Alex Burlachenko 25,530 Reputation points MVP Volunteer Moderator
    2026-04-15T09:53:19.0733333+00:00

    Yuanbo Lin hi & thx for join me at Q&A portal,

    ADF queue issue, it is not ur Lookup step, it never even started, “Queued” means no compute available from integration runtime, most common reasons are IR down or unhealthy, self-hosted IR nodes busy or stuck, concurrency limits hit, or backend scheduling glitch, since ur pipeline usually runs 20 min this is not logic problem at all, if u use self-hosted IR check nodes and restart IR service (this fixes it way too often tbh), if Azure IR then just cancel and rerun bc it is usually transient, tl dr activity not running, it is waiting for IR, fix IR or retry.

    rgds,

    Alex

    &pls if it helps accept my answer

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