Why does memory being used even if I do not refresh data flow ?

[Anonymous]

Hi Community,

Hope every one are protecting yourself from Corona Virus by following guidelines and keep yourself safe . 

I have few data flows created recently in my organization . For one data flow, i refreshed it on 13th March to understand how fast it refreshes data. However, memory is being used on every day for this data flow. I have attached screen shot below . COuld you please check and let me understand why resources are used even if i do not refresh this data flow. 

Thanks,

G Venkatesh

[V-lianl-msft]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Power BI uses a separate process running a special instance of Analysis Services.

You can refer to this:The VertiPaq Engine in DAX 

service-premium-capacity-optimize 

Best Regards,
Liang
If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[tctrout · Accepted solution]

Based on that visual, I am assuming your have premium capacity and that chart is from the Premium Capacity Metrics App.  I believe that chart within the Capacity Metrics App is showing you 2 metrics, that should be read almost independently.  

Data refreshes does impact memory consumption, but is not the only thing.  Just because the dataflow isnt being refreshed doesnt mean that there isnt associated memory to its existence.   Items I would consider to help explain this:

1.  Is the dataflow being used/accessed?

2.  Even if the dataflow isnt actively being used, part of Microsofts secret sauce that make the service fast is to store items in memory constantly utnil resources are constrained.  This gets into frontend vs backend resources with Power BI workloads.

[Anonymous]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, this data flow is currently in use.  However, I refreshed only once on 13th as shown in screenshot. 

Thanks for the explanation surrounding back end data operations. (Workload) . That answers my question .