Power BI Not Loading ~45 Million Rows

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to import a fact table with ~45 million rows, and the import chokes at around 5GB (45 minutes). 

I've already trimmed down columns, avoided text strings, aggregated, etc. to help the load. I know Power BI is supposed to handle billions of records, but I haven't been able to get anywhere close to that amount. We are trying to avoid going down the tabular model route if possible, but this limitation is causing us to rethink our architecture. 

Any ideas on the disconnect?

[Anonymous · Accepted solution]

Hi Nathan,

I wonder if you could benefit by using DirectQuery instead of loading all of your data. Note that you design your model to be Dual mode. Some tables to be in-memory(load all data) and others using DirectQuery.

Please read the following regarding dataset sizes:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/service-premium-what-is

Large datasets

Depending on the SKU, Power BI Premium supports uploading Power BI Desktop (.pbix) model files up to a maximum of 10 GB in size. When loaded, the model can then be published to a workspace assigned to a Premium capacity. The dataset can then be refreshed to up to 12 GB in size.

Size considerations

Large datasets can be resource-intensive. You should have at least a P1 SKU for any datasets larger than 1 GB. Although publishing large datasets to workspaces backed by A SKUs up to A3 could work, refreshing them will not.

The following table shows the recommended SKUs for .pbix file upload or publish to the Power BI service:

SKU Size of .pbix

P1	< 3 GB
P2	< 6 GB
P3, P4, P5	up to 10 GB

let me know if this helps or not.

Tomas