Forum Discussion
Does Power BI Process Refresh Partitions Sequentially or in Parallel?
- 2 months ago
Hi manoj_0911,
Incremental Refresh -
Power BI creates multiple partitions and processes them during refresh. These partitions are not processed strictly one after another, multiple partitions can be processed in parallel (subject to engine limits and capacity).
Microsoft explains the partitioning behavior here - https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-overviewFull Refresh -
Similarly, during a full refresh, Power BI does not process all tables or partitions sequentially. Multiple tables and/or partitions can be refreshed concurrently, which means multiple queries can hit the SQL Server source at the same time.Control over Refresh parallelism -
There’s no direct setting to control partition-level parallelism in Power BI. However, with Premium/PPU and the XMLA endpoint, you can explicitly control how partitions are processed.Microsoft explains Advanced incremental refresh and real-time data with the XMLA endpoint - https://learn.microsoft.com/power-bi/connect-data/incremental-refresh-xmla
💡 Helpful? Give a Kudos 👍 — keep the community growing
✅ Solved your issue? Mark as Solution ✔️ — help others find it faster
Best regards,
Rupasree Achari | BI & Fabric Analytics Engineer
Hi manoj_0911,
Thank you krishnakanth240 Parchitect Rupa01 for your response to the query.
Following up to check whether you got a chance to review the suggestions given. If the issue still persists please let us know. Glad to help.
Thank you.