Long data refresh

[MagnusRosenPBI]

I would like more control over the data refresh process in power BI service.

We have a dataset that normally takes 12 minutes to refresh. This morning it took around 42 minutes. I checked the status of Power BI service and there was some maintenance problem (login issues) in europe during this time, which could have effected us.

Some infrastructure background: 

- We have 10-15 Power BI Pro licenses in the company, no embedded, premium license or similar

- We pull data from Azure blobstorage

- We pull data from Azure SQL databases (Standard S4, 200 DTUs)

- We pull data from some excelfiles on OneDrive

Even though there were some service degradation this morning, which might be the cause of the long refresh time, I am bit concerned over the lack of predictability of the update time. That it normally takes 12 min is bad enough, for it to take 42 minutes as it took this morning is really bad. 

Is there any way to get control over the refresh job? Maybe through some PowerShell script or similar.

Can I cancel a running refresh in some way? 

Can I set a maximum time limit for the refresh?

Where can I find more information on these subjects?

Best Regards

Magnus

[Seth_C_Bauer]

@MagnusRosenPBI The only way for you to control or start to control the timing is by purchasing your own capacity in the cloud. That means a P1 license. Otherwise you are on a shared capacity using anything below that for internal reports. As such, you are subject to issues that impact shared capacity (Others doing heavy refreshes etc.) I know MSFT does their best to throttle and manage those instances so that there are low impacts, but there isn't a whole lot we can do.

In terms of killing the refresh, you could do it at the source if you are connecting to SQL, but once a refresh kicks off I'd just leave it as opposed to trying to kill it as you'll likely create more issues for yourself.