Premium Capacity - Monitoring Capacity utilization by Dataset

[ShankarS]

The Premium Capacity Metrics App seem to provide Capacity Utilization for the overall capacity level but not map or break it into the workspaces OR datasets within the capacity.

How can we get the resource utilization by Dataset and thereby classify the ones that are heavy OR require tuning?

How can we access the underlying data model for additional analysis?

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

The Premium Capacity Metrics App uses datasets like any other app.  You can connect to these datasets from your own Power BI Desktop instance, for example, if you have been given workspace access.  (Note:  For a variety of reasons you will not want to place the Premium Capacity Metrics App onto a Premium Capacity !)

What I am trying to say though is that you will find that the Capacity Metrics app is rather useless if you are serious about optimizing your capacity utilization and load balancing. The audit logs are much more meaningful and provide actionable information.  At the end of the day the single most important KPI is render duration. (with Gen 2 memory pressure and evictions are becoming less of an issue)

[lbendlin]

As I mentioned above the only indicator that truly mattered in a Gen1 environment was the cumulative refresh duration, as this was directly impacting the availability of renderers for other requests. Some of this pressure has been relieved in Gen2, but it is still a useful indicator of which developers need retraining.

[v-jingzhang · Accepted solution]

@ShankarS 

When you have installed the Power BI Premium Metrics app, you could enter the app, click the ellipsis > See related content to find its dataset. Then you could click Create report icon to build your own report based on the CapacityMetrics dataset. You could also get it in Power BI Desktop through Get data > Power BI datasets.

Additionally, here is an article that describes common issues and challenges with Power BI premium capacities and also how to identify and help solve them:

Microsoft Power BI Premium capacity scenarios - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Community Support Team _ Jing Zhang
If this post helps, please consider Accept it as the solution to help other members find it.

[lbendlin]

You are looking for the Audit log extracts. They give you duration of data source refresh, frequency of refresh, dataset size and utilization.  Usually you take the logs, stuff them into dataflows (since they are CSV anyway) and then create your reports against them, similar to this:

[Anonymous]

hello @lbendlin ,do you have the pbix file for this dashboard ?

[lbendlin]

I could send the pbit but it has all custom names for the audit extracts and points to internal dataflows - might be quicker to recreate on your side.

[Anonymous]

Thanks @lbendlin for your response, I just want to have an idea about the different indicators you created based on the audit log 🙂  

[maxiozyilmaz]

How do i get the Audit logs?

[v-jingzhang]

Hi @maxiozyilmaz 

Power BI audit logs are available in the Office 365 Security & Compliance center. In Power BI admin portal, the Audit logs tab provides a link to the Security & Compliance center. Power BI admin portal - Audit logs

You can refer to below links for more details:

Track user activities in Power BI - Power BI | Microsoft Docs

Monitor and audit usage - Learn | Microsoft Docs

Regards,
Community Support Team _ Jing

[ShankarS]

Thanks for your quick response. The Audit Log will provide Usage Trend, Refresh frequency, etc as you have rightly pointed out.

I'm looking for access to the underlying data for the Premium Capacity Metrics App and how the CPU & Memory utilization (which it currently provides at the Premium Capacity level) drilled down to the Dataset level -- so that insights into the CPU utilization, Active Memory utilization, etc by each of the Datasets deployed in the Premium Workspace can be analyzed.

[lbendlin · Accepted solution]

The Premium Capacity Metrics App uses datasets like any other app.  You can connect to these datasets from your own Power BI Desktop instance, for example, if you have been given workspace access.  (Note:  For a variety of reasons you will not want to place the Premium Capacity Metrics App onto a Premium Capacity !)

What I am trying to say though is that you will find that the Capacity Metrics app is rather useless if you are serious about optimizing your capacity utilization and load balancing. The audit logs are much more meaningful and provide actionable information.  At the end of the day the single most important KPI is render duration. (with Gen 2 memory pressure and evictions are becoming less of an issue)