Forum Discussion
Azure Fabric/Power BI Capacity vs Reservation
I am new to Power BI and Fabric, and I want to make sure I do not purchase the same thing twice.
We recently purchased an F64 Fabric Capacity Reservation to take advantage of the 40% discount over the pay-as-you-go price. Am I correct in thinking that I now need to go back and also purchase the actual Fabric Capacity/F64?
The reservation shows in our Azure account, and we have already been billed the expected amount (5k+ for F64), but it looks like we still need the actual fabric capacity.
I don't want to buy the same thing twice. The following page seems to support needing to do this, but I would appreciate someone with some experience backing this up before I make another 'purchase'. I would expect this second purchase to be free since we have already been invoiced for the reservation.
Save costs with Microsoft Fabric Capacity reservations
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cost-management-billing/reservations/fabric-capacity
I appreciate your help.
I think this was the answer I was looking for:
"The reservation is separate from the actual Fabric capacity. It's a billing mechanism, not the capacity itself."
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-am-unable-to-locate-any-info-PemKHCxhR8yvQary2lZ27w
"As mentioned above a reservation is for CUs (the s is for the plural) every hour. If you buy a reservation for 1 CU, every hour, 1 CU hour of your usage within the scope of the reservation is paid for by the reservation. It has nothing to do with a capacity. Scope is the only thing that determines where it applies - it can be the billing account, subscription or the resource group."
3 Replies
- lbendlin
Super User
No, that's it - you got a F64 for a year. If you don't use all the CUs - tough, you already paid. If you need more capacity you can choose to pay for the overage by consumption, or you can choose to tank your F64 until the interactive rejection period is over.
Thanks. The thing is though, I don't see my capacity anywhere. I see the reservation in Azure and it says teh status is Succeeded and is type 'fabric_capacity_cu_hour' and I have been invoiced for it, however, when I go into the PowerBI admin site under capacity it does not show up, it just says 'Purchase a Microsoft Fabric capacity'. I also cannot assign my workspaces to it, all I have is my trial option.
This doc:
Save costs with Microsoft Fabric Capacity reservations - How reservation discounts apply to Microsoft Fabric Capacity
Has the following text:
Example 1 - A reservation that's exactly the same size as the capacity. For example, you purchase 64 CUs of capacity and you deploy an F64. In this example, you only pay the reservation price.
So I am confused. How do I then 'deploy' a capacity from just a reservation???
I think this was the answer I was looking for:
"The reservation is separate from the actual Fabric capacity. It's a billing mechanism, not the capacity itself."
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/i-am-unable-to-locate-any-info-PemKHCxhR8yvQary2lZ27w
"As mentioned above a reservation is for CUs (the s is for the plural) every hour. If you buy a reservation for 1 CU, every hour, 1 CU hour of your usage within the scope of the reservation is paid for by the reservation. It has nothing to do with a capacity. Scope is the only thing that determines where it applies - it can be the billing account, subscription or the resource group."
