CU consumption of Fabric Database

[RomainDomart1]

Dear all, 

We are migrating some of our components to SQL DB. 

Architecture : F2

The use case : 

- In the course of our pipeline, we fetch and update some data / flags / timestamp from config tables that we used to host in a WH (to benefit from SQL Script). As Delta is not the best option when it comes to concurrent updates, we want to move to a Fabric DB. 

- In term of features it works perfectly. 

- But we are a bit concerned by the data displayed in the Fabric Capacity Metric regarding the usage.  (Interactive Non Billable ?? ) 

It seems very high to us and we are reluctant to go with this option on a bigger scale, if we have to fear hug impact in the performances.

Do you have any explanation on the consumption ? Any reference ? I did not find anything in the documentation. 

[nilendraFabric · Accepted solution]

Hello @RomainDomart1 

Fabric classifies pipeline-triggered activities as interactive operations when they:
• Use T-SQL DML statements (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) on config tables
• Query DMVs/system catalog views 
• Contain cross-database operations

Your F2 SKU (2 CUs ≈ 1 vCore) has limited interactive operation capacity:

Interactive | ~3,600 CU-seconds/hr

Background | ~1,800 CUsec/hr

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/fabric-docs/blob/main/docs/data-warehouse/how-to-observe-utilizatio...

The “Interactive Non-Billable” label appears because:
• Fabric SQL Database remains free until 2025-01-01 
• System-generated operations (pipeline coordination, statistics updates) don’t incur charges

hope this helps

now to improve performance and optimise cost try these

Replace frequent small updates with batch operations -- merge

Use the DMV query to track expensive operations 

Thanks

[amapatil · Accepted solution]

Hi @RomainDomart1 ,

You can find the learn doc for Fabric Database billing here : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/database/sql/usage-reporting

Here are a couple of other resources that might help :

1. Blog post: https://blog.fabric.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/efficiently-monitor-sql-database-usage-and-consumption-...

2.Demo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPFcY7wTQg

The current conversion for Fabric Databases is  1 Fabric capacity unit = 0.383 SQL database vCores

Billing will start after 1st February 2025, hence you may be seeing Non-Billable usage

[nilendraFabric · Accepted solution]

Hello @RomainDomart1 

Fabric classifies pipeline-triggered activities as interactive operations when they:
• Use T-SQL DML statements (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) on config tables
• Query DMVs/system catalog views 
• Contain cross-database operations

Your F2 SKU (2 CUs ≈ 1 vCore) has limited interactive operation capacity:

Interactive | ~3,600 CU-seconds/hr

Background | ~1,800 CUsec/hr

https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/fabric-docs/blob/main/docs/data-warehouse/how-to-observe-utilizatio...

The “Interactive Non-Billable” label appears because:
• Fabric SQL Database remains free until 2025-01-01 
• System-generated operations (pipeline coordination, statistics updates) don’t incur charges

hope this helps

now to improve performance and optimise cost try these

Replace frequent small updates with batch operations -- merge

Use the DMV query to track expensive operations 

Thanks