Am I able to make use of Premium Capacity Deployment Pipelines and then roll back to Pro licensing?

[ldittmann970]

Hello,

   I have a client who will be performing a 'new' data integration which will be altering and changing the existing company heirarchies which will require changes to both our datawarehouse environment as well as several edits on reports which exist in multiple workspaces and Apps published to the Power BI Service.  The client currently has approx 100 licensed pro users, and 20 workspaces, and does not make use of Premium capacity.  

   We plan to create a new 'test' dwh environment to work through how to incorporate the new structure, and will need to test our Power BI reports against the test environment, make necessary edits to the files, and get them all updated in their respective prod workspaces and Apps once the prod dwh is updated.

   I am thinking that it would be great to be able to utilize Power BI Deployment Pipelines to perform this testing, by assigning the exisiting Pro workspaces to a new premium capacity as the 'Production workspaces', creating the Dev and Test workspaces as needed (likely making the Dev and Test workspaces PPU and assigning a few PPU users to them), working through the changes until everything is updated in the Prod workspaces, and then rolling those Premium Prod workspaces back to Pro and deleting the Dev and Test workspaces.  I theorize that using a premium capacity and deployment pipeline for this project will result in time savings during validation (maybe even use PBI Metrics here?) and deployment thanks to the organization and eased stress.

   My questions are:
1) Will there be any drawbacks stemming from reverting the Workspaces back to Pro?  Any broken links, Apps, or source definition issues? Issues specific to AAS cubes or Import models? Security changes in Apps or workspaces? 
2) Additionally, the hope would be that we would require the capacity for only 1 month - is this possible?  Or do you need to purchase Capacity in yearly increments only?
3) Since users would maintain their Pro Capacity licenses over this push, and all cubes will be maintained in AAS, is there any reason we couldn't get by with a P1 Capacity?
Thank you so much for your thoughts and feedback here!

[ldittmann970]

Thank you Caiyun for the confirmation that I will be able to switch back to Pro after we complete the use-case for Deployment Pipelines.  I will add that I have completed some research and identified that we will be able to use the Premium-Per-User licensing for all users rather than a dedicated P1 capacity for a slight savings benefit.  I did not realize that PPU would be able to support the Production stage of a deployment pipeline - but as long as all users of the App and workspace are PPU-licensed, it works! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/enterprise/service-premium-per-user-faq

[v-cazheng-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi @ldittmann970,

If you would like to change your license mode from Premium to Pro after completing the using of Pipeline, there is no impact to the links and apps of this workspace and source definitions, but you will lose the features/capacities that are only supported in Premium.

What is Microsoft Power BI Premium? - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

What is Power BI Premium Gen2? - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

For the capacity license(Premium capacity/Premium per user capacity), there are two kinds of commitments: monthly and yearly. But they are all billed monthly.

What is Microsoft Power BI Premium? - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Pricing & Product Comparison | Microsoft Power BI

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly. If I misunderstand your needs or you still have problems on it, please feel free to let me know. Thanks a lot!

Best Regards,

Community Support Team _ Caiyun