What is the Power BI Capacity Metrics App?
The Power BI Capacity Metrics App is a monitoring tool designed for administrators managing Power BI Premium or Microsoft Fabric capacities. It provides detailed insights into how capacity resources are consumed, helping organizations optimize performance and manage resource utilization.
This app offers:
- Near Real-time and historical data usage trends
- Alerts for capacity limits and bottlenecks
- Detailed metrics on dataset refreshes, query response times, and memory usage
Why You Should Use the Capacity Metrics App?
Effective capacity management ensures that:
- Resources aren't overloaded: Prevents slow performance by alerting admins before capacities hit their limits.
- Data is refreshed efficiently: Tracks dataset refreshes and helps identify delays or failures.
- Optimal scaling decisions: Helps organizations decide when to scale up or redistribute workloads based on usage patterns.
How to Install and Configure the Capacity Metrics App
Prerequisites:
- Admin rights for Power BI Premium or Microsoft Fabric capacities.
- A dedicated workspace (preferably Pro licensed) to host the app.
Steps:
- Install from AppSource
- Go to AppSource and search for "Power BI Capacity Metrics App."
- Click Get it now and sign in with your Microsoft credentials.
- Configure the App
- Connect the app to your capacity by providing:
- Capacity ID: Found in the Admin Portal URL for your capacity.
- UTC Offset: Enter your local time zone offset from UTC.
- Analyze Reports
- Open the app from the Power BI Apps section.
- Use built-in dashboards to monitor and manage capacity usage effectively.
- Open the app from the Power BI Apps section.
- Use built-in dashboards to monitor and manage capacity usage effectively.
Key Features of the Capacity Metrics App
- Comprehensive Monitoring
- Tracks memory usage, query performance, and dataset refresh statistics.
- Provides insights into both real-time and historical capacity performance.
- Performance Analysis
- Identifies peak usage periods.
- Pinpoints the most resource-intensive datasets and reports.
- User Activity Tracking
- Monitors active users and their interactions with datasets.
- Helps administrators understand usage patterns.
- Alerts and Notifications
- Sends alerts when capacity thresholds are nearing.
- Helps prevent slowdowns or outages.
Key focus areas
Capacity utilization and throttling chart
This visual comprises three distinct tabs: Utilization, Throttling, and Overages. Let's examine each tab individually to gain a comprehensive understanding of the insights they offer.Utilization
- Background %: Represented by blue columns, indicating the percentage of CU consumption used for background operations within a 30-second period. This pertains to billable operations. Background operations encompass backend processes that are not directly triggered by users, such as data refreshes.
- Interactive %: Represented by red columns, indicating the percentage of CU consumption used for interactive operations within a 30-second period. This pertains to billable operations. Interactive operations cover a broad spectrum of resources triggered by user interactions, such as interactive page loads.
- CU % Limit: Depicted by a grey dotted line, showing the threshold of the permitted percentage of CU consumption for the selected capacity. Columns extending above this line represent time points where the capacity is overloaded.
Throttling
- Interactive activities
- This activity category is for consuming the report and interacting with the dashboards
- Background activities
- This activity category is for background task like dataset refreshes, Subscriptions etc.
| Policy | Consumption | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Overage protection | Usage <= 10 minutes | Jobs can consume 10 minutes of future capacity use without throttling. |
| Interactive delay | 10 minutes < usage <= 60 minutes | User requested interactive jobs are throttled. |
| Interactive rejection | 60 minutes < usage <= 24 hours | User requested interactive jobs are rejected. |
| Background rejection | Usage > 24 hours | User scheduled background jobs are rejected and not executed. |
To switch between interactive delay, interactive rejection, and background rejection, utilize the tabs at the top of the visual. Time points with values exceeding 100% are depicted in a darker color.
The interactive and background rejection tabs operate similarly. If the future capacity consumption reaches 75% at a specific time point, you have 15 minutes before the onset of interactive or background rejection, resulting in the rejection of user-requested jobs.
The throttling chart presents the following elements:
- Interactive Delay: Interactive operations are delayed when the 10-minute interactive % smoothing surpasses the interactive delay threshold.
- Interactive Rejection: Interactive operations are rejected when the 60-minute interactive % smoothing exceeds the interactive rejection threshold.
- Background Rejection: Background operations are rejected when the 24-hour background % smoothing crosses the background rejection threshold.
The filters applied to the page in the Multi Metric Ribbon Chart impact the chart's display as follows:
- No Filters Applied: Columns display the peak time point every six minutes.
- Filters Applied:The visual displays every 30-second time point. To view granular data, select a date from the Multi Metric Ribbon Chart's x-axis.
Overages
Illustrates the addition, burndown, and cumulative carryforward over time. The carryforward metric exclusively considers billable operations.
The overages chart showcases the following components:
- Add %: Depicted by green columns, representing the carryforward percentage added during the current 30-second period.
- Burndown %: Illustrated by blue columns, indicating the carryforward percentage reduced for the current 30-second period.
- Cumulative %: Shown as a red line, representing the cumulative carryforward percentage for the current 30-second period. The cumulative percentage is displayed on the secondary axis located on the right side of the visual.
Upon selecting a column in the chart, you can use the Explore button to delve deeper into the time point page.
The Power BI Capacity Metrics App is an invaluable resource for administrators, enabling efficient management of resources, prevention of bottlenecks, and ensuring a smooth user experience. By offering insights into performance metrics, this app helps businesses optimize their Power BI Premium investments. We will discuss the time point page and other matrix visuals in a subsequent post.
