Power BI Premium - Scaling Down?

[andyw324]

Dear PBI Forum,

On the FAQ page for Power BI (link) it mentions under "What does Power BI Premium do? How does it work?" that premium can be "scale up or down as requirements change". Does that imply that during expected busy periods one can increase Premium capacity from, say, 1xP1 to 3xP1 and after "X" days decrease capacity back to 1xP1? If so, this does contradict the statement under the question and it would help to clarify which statement is the more accurate one:

"How is Power BI Premium billed?
Power BI Premium is billed monthly with an annual commitment."

If it is possible to scale up and down the Premium capacity (assuming the annual commitment is to the original premium size??) how frequently can one do this and how does the billing work in this case (i.e. what is the minimum "X" above)?

Kind regards

Andrew

[v-jiascu-msft · Accepted solution]

@andyw324

Hi Andrew,

There are two aspects about the capacity. One is the capacity we buy and the other is how we assign the capacity. For example:

1. We bought a capacity P1 (8 v-cores). We can't scale up or down unless we buy a new capacity.

2. We have only one App workspace that is used by a few users. So we create a new capacity with only 1 v-core and assign it to the App workspace. There are 7 v-cores left. One day, the whole company wants to use this workspace. Now it's time to scale up the capacity. So we scale up the capacity to 8 v-cores. 

>>>Organizations can choose to apply their dedicated capacity broadly, or allocate it to assigned workspaces based on the number of users, workload needs or other factors—and scale up or down as requirements change.

Reference: #managing-capacity

Best Regards!

Dale

[andyw324]

Dale,

Thanks for the clear explanation. Guess my head was in the space of how PaaS and IaaS work.

Regards

Andrew