capacity, vCores in Fabric

[Hennie1234]

I'm trying to understand capacities, vcores in Microsoft Fabric. I've a couple of questions :

• Are capacities the same in Fabric as in PowerBI? For instance: Can there be vCores shortage? Just like in PowerBI you can get a message vCores have expired? What is meant with v-Cores are expired? IMO I would have thought that vCores are virtual cores are virtualized cores on top of physical cores? They are always there right? How can they expire?
• Are there frontEnd and backEnd vCores? Is that the same as in PowerBI?
• Reserved capacity?

Or Am I mixing up PowerBI capacity and Fabric Capacity? Are these differnet things or do they work the same?

[GeethaT-MSFT]

Hi @Hennie1234  Thanks for posting your question in Microsoft Fabric CommunityPower BI capacities are transitioning to Fabric capacities.  A capacity is not a physical set of computing resources, but a quota of resources that items in associated workspaces consume. 

When purchased through O365 the cores are available for set period of time, and will expire if not renewed.

Fabric capacities are measured in Capacity Units, not vCores.  Different workloads report CU utilization using different formulas. 1 Power BI vCore corresponds to 8 Fabric CUs.

There are no "front end" cores anymore in PBI or Fabric.

Azure Fabric F-SKU Capacities will be available for purchase with pay-as-you-go pricing and Reserved Instance pricing.  Currently, only pay-as-you-go is available in Azure.

"Fabric capacities and Power BI Premium capacities" in particular:  Announcing Microsoft Fabric capacities are available for purchase | Microsoft Fabric Blog | Microsof...

Even on the Power BI side backend and frontend v-cores became unified cores in December:

Simplifying capacity management with unified v-cores | Microsoft Power BI Blog | Microsoft Power BI

Regards

Geetha

[mkjit256]

Can we compare between 1 V-CORE or 8 Fabric CU and physical rams. Like i hear others talking about memory power (like 12 GB of memoery) in a database, is there any equivalence between 1 V-CORE or 8 Fabric CU and physical rams?