I have been running into a configuration mismatch problem between Power BI Desktop and Power BI service. I use shared capacity in the Power BI service, and Power BI Desktop is installed on my local workstation. So, naturally, I have different configurations (i.e., RAM / memory, CPU, disk) in both "environments". Also, all of my reports use Import / Scheduled Refresh mode. So, I am impacted more by configuration differences (as opposed to, say, Direct Query). I have had several instances where a report refresh in Desktop runs significantly longer (or, sometimes, shorter) than a report refresh in the service. My goal is to make the configurations (at least memory and CPU) of both as identical as possible, so that I can ensure that a report will refresh in a desired amount of time before it gets released to production (i.e., published to the service). How can I achieve this? Since I can't do anything about the service configuration (e.g., I have no control over the 1-[GB] memory limit), I have to configure the Desktop installation appropriately. Should I install Desktop on a machine that is configured to match the specs of the service? If so, what specs of the service should I copy into the configuration of that machine?
