Can different Power-BI (Embedded) Service Principal Profiles share Capacity among each other

[gabriel-mendes]

Hi all

I am reading through the docs of Power-BI embedded and I understand that for a scalable multi-tenant solution, we should use service principal profiles and create workspaces and datasoures per tenant within a profile.

I am also checking out the API to setup a tenant programatically and found this one: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/rest/api/power-bi/capacities/groups-assign-to-capacity

I wanted to ask if a capacity that I provision within my Azure resource group can be shared among the service principal profiles?

This would make administration easier, when increasing the capacity and managing it in general.

Many thanks for your help and kind regards

[TomMartens]

Hey @gabriel-mendes ,

the simple answer is: yes.

A capacity can be considered as a some kind of computer that is able to allocate its resources to the demand raised by different users (the service principals).

I think, it's mandatory to clarify what you mean by "multi-tenant solution", my assumption, you are designing/building a solution that will be used by different clients and you want/have to separate data between these clients.
But there is only one Power BI tenant, run by your organization. This is important because there is this kind of hierarchy

... --> 1 workspace  * --> 1 capacity * --> 1 Power BI tenant 

Hopefully, this provides what you are looking for.

Regards,

Tom

[gabriel-mendes]

Hi @TomMartens 

Many thanks for your answer, this is already very helpful!

In terms of multi-tenant, I refer to multiple customers (tenants) in our system.

- We plan to have 1 service principal.

- Then, this service principal will have multiple profiles per customer.

- Each profile will have a workspace and a data source within.

As I understand, this means I can create 1 capacity and assign all the workspaces to this capacity and manage the capacity centrally (no need to increase/decrease capacity for each tenant, I can just manage one object).

[TomMartens · Accepted solution]

Hey @gabriel-mendes,

one SPN with multiple profiles, one for each customer. Each customer has its own workspace; all workspaces are assigned to the same capacity.

You (the human)

• manage the SPN
• you manage the capacity
• you manage the Power BI tenant

Everything works as you mentioned.

Regards,

Tom