Forum Discussion
Helper IVIs there any maximum size limit and data storage limit when using Power BI Report Server?
HI BBIUser ,
I'm not aware of a published max size for a data model in PBIX using on-prem report server. However, remember its a memory based technology, using the same underlying systems as SSAS Tabular, Vertipaq. So the limit is what will fit in memory. For example, If you have 32gb ram, then you will be lucky to get away with a 25gb PBIx data model, This is not an exact example, just an illustration. But Vertipaq does a great job of compressing the data, so its not the same size in the PBIX as it might be in other formats.
If you want bigger data models you need lots of RAM. I've just speced a new PBI RS server and it has over 700GB of RAM. In the future we plan to double that to 1.4TB of ram.
Hope this helps
Rob
- Well, that's really cool and quite smart.
- So it means that I can import a huge data set of 5GB, for example?
- When the user sees the report in the web site, all the transformation occurs in the Report Server itself and not brought to the user machine/browser?
- It means that for each user opens a report, the data set will be copied?
- According to this 1 + this 2 the size IS limited - so i'm confused. Maybe the size of ALL the data sets is unlimited, but a single data set is limited to 2 GB?
Hi panda2004,
The size is limited, but there is no exact answer to the limit, it depends on your set-up, how much RAM have you got, how many PBIX solutions in simultaneous use, other software on the server etc... You will need to experiment with the PBIX solutions you have built and see how they perform under use.
Good questions about multiple users of the PBIX and its implications on memory use, I'm not sure about that, I wonder if anybody else is? We mainly use SSAS Tabular models, which by their nature are single models supporting multiple users, our PBIX file sizes are very small, our SSAS tabular data models very large.
The Power BI server does all of the hard work, the user viewing through a browser only receives the presentation layer back to their browser, that does include a lot of data if you are displaying a lot of data, but not the whole data model, this is a client / server style implementation.
If your PBIX is 5GB then that's not very big, so is likely to be fine. We have much larger datasets and they work well. You manage the size by being careful what you include in the model, and what DAX you use to define additional elements. There are some tools for monitoring this stuff, take a look at the https://www.sqlbi.com/tools/ site, they are experts on this sort of thing.
Where are you getting the 2GB size limit info from, I'm not aware that is the case. It maybe that the basic Azure cloud based deployment has a limited data size, but not the on-prem version........ I don't think?
Rob
Hey Anonymous,
"your PBIX is 5GB then that's not very big, so is likely to be fine. We have much larger datasets and they work well".
That's good to hear!
You mean that the data-set stored and refreshed in Report Server, right?
