Skip to main content
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Next up in the FabCon + SQLCon recap series: The roadmap for Microsoft SQL and Maximizing Developer experiences in Fabric. All sessions are available on-demand after the live show. Register now

Reply
opejoseph
New Member

Is Power BI report server naturally slow?

So i recently moved my power bi assets from Power BI service to my self hosted report server. I noticed it seems loading a report loads slowly when compared to power bi service. I am using a good remote server that has some capacities. I have done the best practices like reducing the joins in the report, cut schedule refresh, and optimizing queries, using the performance analyzer on desktop shows positive result too.   Stakeholders get pissed off when it takes forever to see anything on their screen. Can anything be done to mitigate this?

8 REPLIES 8
mpsrshl
Advocate II
Advocate II

 It run faster in our local server than in the closest datacentre in our tests. 

I used a very simple report for testing, which can be opened in the cloud in about 3 seconds, but it takes 5 seconds locally

 

josef78
Memorable Member
Memorable Member

First, analyse ExecutionLog3 to check what is slow, if model processing, open report definion, model loading to memory, or dax queries. Second, check you server resources, especially memory a CPU utilisation. Also check how often are report wipe-out from memory.

 

For comparsion, in my enviroment, I must install second PBIRS server in scale-out mode, and dedicate background model processing to second server (and first server only as PBIRS front-end). My experience, model processing, and also dax query performance is fully comparable to cloud Power BI Service. But report open (authentificate and definition load) and load model into memory (if not already loaded), is little slow (but not big difference}

and dedicate background model processing to second server (and first server only as PBIRS front-end) Can you explain how to do it?

On Front end servers, find rsreportserver.config file in your instalation folder. And set <IsDataModelRefreshService> to false.

thank you

josef78
Memorable Member
Memorable Member

First, analyse ExecutionLog3 to check what is slow, if model processing, open report definion, model loading to memory, or dax queries. Second, check you server resources, especially memory a CPU utilisation. Also check how often are report wipe-out from memory.

 

For comparsion, in my enviroment, I must install second PBIRS server in scale-out mode, and dedicate background model processing to second server (and first server only as PBIRS front-end). My experience, model processing, and also dax query performance is fully comparable to cloud Power BI Service. But report open (authentificate and definition load) and load model into memory (if not already loaded), is little slow (but not big difference}

lbendlin
Super User
Super User

Helpful resources

Announcements
New to Fabric survey Carousel

New to Fabric Survey

If you have recently started exploring Fabric, we'd love to hear how it's going. Your feedback can help with product improvements.

Power BI DataViz World Championships carousel

Power BI DataViz World Championships - June 2026

A new Power BI DataViz World Championship is coming this June! Don't miss out on submitting your entry.

Join our Fabric User Panel

Join our Fabric User Panel

Share feedback directly with Fabric product managers, participate in targeted research studies and influence the Fabric roadmap.

March Power BI Update Carousel

Power BI Community Update - March 2026

Check out the March 2026 Power BI update to learn about new features.