Help Making Sense of Capacity Units in the Fabric Capacity Metrics report

[arpost]

Greetings, community. I am trying to evaluate the Fabric usage in our organization in relation to Microsoft's new pricing announcement. I am using the Fabric Capacity metrics report but am finding it less-than-helpful in terms of connecting the data provided to Fabric Capacity Units.

1. We have a Power BI Premium P1 SKU with F64.
2. The report shows everything in Capacity Units in Seconds: CU (s)
3. Our total CU usage is show as <10%.

My question is: does that 10% translate to 10% of the 64 CU included with our P1 plan? The report doesn't explicitly identify the actual number of capacity units in use and/or used. I read the documentation for the report, which didn't really clarify either.

[Anonymous]

Hi @arpost 
Thanks for using Fabric Community.

Yes, the 10% reported in CU(s) likely translates to 10% of the 64 CU capacity included with your P1 plan.

Here's the breakdown:

• P1 SKU with F64: This refers to your Power BI Premium capacity tier (P1) and the included Fabric capacity size (F64). P1 offers 64 Capacity Units (CUs).
• Fabric Capacity metrics report in CU(s): This report tracks your Fabric usage in terms of Capacity Unit seconds (CU(s)). It essentially measures how long (in seconds) your workload has consumed compute resources within the allocated 64 CUs.
• <10% usage: This indicates that your organization is currently using less than 10% of the total compute power available in your 64 CU Fabric capacity.

The report might not explicitly show the actual number of CUs used because it focuses on consumed compute seconds (CU(s)) rather than a static number of CUs. This provides a more dynamic view of resource utilization.

Example:

Imagine you run a task that requires 2 CUs for 30 seconds. This translates to 2 CUs * 30 seconds = 60 CU(s) consumed. In the report, you would see 60 CU(s), not just "2 CUs used."

For more information please refer to these links:
https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/capacity-metrics-in-microsoft-fabric?ft=Core:category
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/enterprise/metrics-app-compute-page

Hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any further questions.

[arpost]

Thank you for your reply, @Anonymous. That was a helpful breakdown. I still have a question, though, in terms of helping determine the amount of Fabric CUs needed based on the Fabric Capacity Metrics app.

How does a person reverse the math to identify the number of CUs used? In your example, the report would show 60 CU(s), but I would want to be able to convert that into a CU consumption estimate so I can recommend the number of Fabric CUs that our organization would need based on our usage

I reviewed those links, and I didn't spot anything that addresses this.

[Anonymous]

Hi @arpost 
If you are trying to size, a background operation is smoothed over 24 hours so 60 CU s will be effectively 2.5 CU s every hour. A capacity sized 2, F2 has 7200 CU s in an hour. A report is smoothed over 5 minutes so the same capacity has 600 CU s in that time period. Now you can size.

Hope this helps.

[Anonymous]

Hi @arpost 
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if your query got resolved. Otherwise, will respond back with the more details and we will try to help.
Thanks

[Anonymous]

Hi @arpost 
We haven’t heard from you on the last response and was just checking back to see if your query got resolved. Otherwise, will respond back with the more details and we will try to help.
Thanks