Publishing small pbix files, what happens when the data model grows beyond 250 meg after refresh?

[AllanXu]

Greetings,

I am publishing a small pbix file. Once the pbix file is published to the PBI portal, I will setup a dataset refresh schedule and I expect the data model will grow beyond 250 megs.  I wonder what would happen when the during the refresh the data model grows beyond 250 meg?

In other words, is the 250 meg just an “upload” limit or the limitation applies after data model refresh as well?

Thank you,

[greggyb · Accepted solution]

From the fine article:

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You can have your data model in a couple of locations.  Either in an Excel Workbook, a Power BI Desktop file or an on premises Analysis Services Tabular Instance.

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What I really want to get across here is that when I talk about the Data Model, I don’t mean the Excel Workbook.  The workbook is just a container that has the Data Model within it.

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When you import a Workbook or Power BI Designer file, we extract the data model from the file and host it in our back end.  We then work against that hosted Data Model, not the workbook or PBIX file where it came from. 

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If the data file within the .pbix archive is >250MB, then that is noteworthy. With a total size >400MB, there would have to be an incredibly large amount of non-data information stored in the .pbix. Can you unzip the .pbix and share with us the size of the data portion?

Edit: Forgot a quote

[psheridan]

The scheduled refresh will fail once the data model exceeds 250 MB. I have a few where I started getting this message:

"The scheduled refresh has been suspended because the dataset is too large. Please reduce the size to 250 MB or less, and then refresh the dataset manually. For SaaS content packs, we suggest modeling your data with Power Query raw query in the Power BI Desktop, filtering down to 250 MB or less."

Keep in mind - if you can split up the model, you can upload and schedule multiple files and then pin items from different sources to the same dashboard. Only way I know of at this point to get past the 250 MB/file limitation.

[AllanXu]

Hi @psheridan

My PBIX file is based on SQL Server data (not excel files). I've just tried to create a small PBIX model with reduced dataset sizes. Then published the pbix files, started to refresh through the personal gateway. The refresh is done successfully. No error. I know the size of data after refresh is around 400 meg. 

I wonder how come I don't get the error you experienced.

What type of data sources (excel files? ) did you have when your refresh broke because of dataset size?

I am concern that my refresh might break sometime soon? If 400 meg is not the limite, then what is the limite?

[psheridan · Accepted solution]

Hi @AllanXu - I have imported a PowerPivot model into Power BI Desktop. When I originally created the file, it was somewhere around 200 MB. After a few months of refreshing, the pbix file has grown to exceed to 250 MB upload limitation. As @greggyb states, that data is already compressed significantly within the pbix file vs the size of the data on the server side.

[greggyb]

@AllanXu There are different size limits for free and Pro licenses in Power BI. Additionally, it is important to measure the size of the compressed data in Power BI, not the size of the data on disk in SQL Server. Power BI utilizes powerful compression in its columnstore engine where we typically see 7x-10x compression vs uncompressed SQL Server data.

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing

http://blogs.technet.com/b/powerbisupport/archive/2015/08/11/the-conceptual-data-model-and-limits.as...

[AllanXu]

@greggyb, Please consider that I circumvented 250 meg pbix file upload limit by the "Hack" I explained above.

My dataset takes 440 meg in pbix file. It refreshed successfully in the PBI portal. So we have some missing puzzle here.

How can I check the size of each dataset in the PBI portal? There must be refresh size limit there. It is more than 250 meg according to my experimient.

BTW, the video you shared relates to excel files. I am not working with excel files here. I work with SQL Server data,

Thank you for help. 

[greggyb · Accepted solution]

From the fine article:

---

You can have your data model in a couple of locations.  Either in an Excel Workbook, a Power BI Desktop file or an on premises Analysis Services Tabular Instance.

---

---

What I really want to get across here is that when I talk about the Data Model, I don’t mean the Excel Workbook.  The workbook is just a container that has the Data Model within it.

---

When you import a Workbook or Power BI Designer file, we extract the data model from the file and host it in our back end.  We then work against that hosted Data Model, not the workbook or PBIX file where it came from. 

---

If the data file within the .pbix archive is >250MB, then that is noteworthy. With a total size >400MB, there would have to be an incredibly large amount of non-data information stored in the .pbix. Can you unzip the .pbix and share with us the size of the data portion?

Edit: Forgot a quote