Programatically start/stop Azure PowerBI capacity for PowerBI Embedded

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ckelbley wrote:

I have had success using these API calls:

 

POST https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME/providers/Microsoft.PowerBIDedicated/capacities/CAPACITY_NAME/resume?api-version=2017-10-01

POST https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID/resourceGroups/RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME/providers/Microsoft.PowerBIDedicated/capacities/CAPACITY_NAME/suspend?api-version=2017-10-01

 

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ckelbley

Could you share where you find those APIs, any documentations?

I was wondering the same thing, and I found this:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/power-bi-embedded/pause-start

...Which is for databases, but the API implies it is for "pausing compute" which would probably be the same thing as powerbi embedded?

Edit: Wrong link - I meant this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/sql-data-warehouse/sql-data-warehouse-manage-compute-rest-api#pause-compute 

Hi Nimrod.

If you have the time; these are the potential pitfalls (and I think I stumbled on every single one):

Your link doesn't help much for most ISV users since I'ts in C#. We use MEAN stack for instance
I prefer the API POST/GET method since It Isn't code language dependant.

Problems

Microsoft login (Both Azure and Power BI).
The old login experience took into account that you always want to choose your account type edu/work/personal upon login.
The new MS login is flawed in some ways:

• Creates new accounts by asking for new password, so now I have 2 Azure accounts unwillingly.
• Creates Azure accounts based on your Outlook email being open.
• Blocks email client from working If you logged into azure before outlook.
• No security feature per users, stay logged in however long you like, admin can be logged into many browsers and computers at the same time. This is not very safe for being a corporate service.
• Solution: Azure session timer. Always show "choose type of account Edu/work/personal". Don't allow multi login for Azure admins, kick out from other session.

Azure account type
Your tech support did not know the prerequisit for Azure to allow access to resources - SKU or workspaces.

This led to:

• Azure allowed account creation with @hotmail.com accounts.
• Coorporate emails wont be recognized and thus creating Azure personal accounts.
• There was no information atleast not within the pages concerning Power BI embedded; that Domain DNS had to be registered within Office 365 and Cloudflare of your company domain to allow full Azure functionality.
• Solution: block Azure from certain email suffixes. Link clearly step by step guide of how to take over domain in Office 365, you have docs on this just link it to the step by step guide for Power bi embedded.

Power BI embedded docs

• After knowing that changes to Embedded service would happen after July 2017 (scarse messages from MS in forums and some guy in the cube videos) there was still no documentation at all regarding Power BI SKU at november 2017.
• No links to ARM for starting/pausing the service a vital API command for this new running cost service.
• API documentation on Azure ARM and PBI API does not have any information of what request header and credentials are needed to get a Bearer token OR an Embed token for your report.
• I have now searched half day after a connection documentation for PBI embedded. I'm guessing many will want to automate creation of reports and app workspaces. I want to use a report as template and populate this with new customer data. Are there any new connectors that the API could use besides Streaming JSON, MS SQL, SPARK, xlsx and CSV?
• Add Product Portfolio overview. Power BI product line is getting more diffuse. Please explain capabilities and prices for all products in a matrix chart. For instance that dashboards doesnt exist in PBI desktop, data sources and measures can't be edited in PBI cloud. Dashboards can't be themed and can't crossfilter. PBI premium capabilities vs PBI embedded.
• Solution: Delete your old docs, or atleast put a "notice of depricated service" on all old docs. Add new docs for SKU method. Include links under "How to embed"; to github for more languages, ARM API & Power BI API. Include the Headers needed for successful API calls. Update info about dataset switching and sources supported, the old Workspace collection method was more limited but I haven't seen any proof that more datasources are supported.

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wrote:

Anyone discover any way to schedule an stop for Power BI Embedded?

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This is pretty straightforward... create a Powershell script that you can use within an Azure Automation runbook. This Powershell script should use the latest version of the Azure RM Powershell module that the Power BI team have added pause/resume capacity commands to. Then you schedule the runbook to run at the appropriate time of day/day of week.

It is probably easiest to create two separate runbooks; one for pausing, one for resuming - but you could add parameters to your script/runbook and handle both situations in the one script. Plus you might want to add parameters to indicate which capacity to pause/resume or maybe just hard-code this if appropriate.

It appears that the capacities pause and resume pretty quickly - but that might depend on time of day/region/capacity size, etc. Any insight from the Power BI team here would be great!