Capacity consumed by users downloading data

[AnHell]

Hello,

I have some users who, for certain offline meetings, download the information they will need from certain reports.

This data download causes the fabric capacity to exceed 100%.

Is there any way to limit this capacity consumption to prevent users from exhausting capacity simply by downloading information?

Thanks in advance!

[AnHell]

Hello,

Thank you very much for this information. I was not aware of this parameter.

It does indeed only limit background activities, although it is true that I can play around with the percentage limits to ensure that background activities are limited when a user launches an interactive operation.

In this case, I would be compromising background activities for the needs of some users, which I could certainly limit, but it is a good way to start managing this issue.

In the meantime, we can only hope that the rumour about Epic Systems is true and that it arrives soon.

Thank you very much!

[v-achippa]

Hi @AnHell,

Thank you for reaching out to Microsoft Fabric Community.

Thank you @lbendlin and @tayloramy for the prompt response. 

Thanks for the response. Yes surge protection only limits background jobs, and user-initiated downloads or exports are treated as interactive operations, so they can still consume capacity.

• Currently there is no setting to directly limit capacity usage for exports. The only control is to restrict who is allowed to export data, to prevent large downloads from impacting capacity.

Surge protection is still helpful to protect the capacity from background load, but it will not stop interactive downloads. Hopefully we will see more granular controls in the future, but this is the current behaviour.

Thanks and regards,

Anjan Kumar Chippa

[v-achippa]

Hi @AnHell,

As we haven’t heard back from you, we wanted to kindly follow up to check if the solution I have provided for the issue worked? or let us know if you need any further assistance.

Thanks and regards,

Anjan Kumar Chippa

[tayloramy · Accepted solution]

Hi @AnHell, 

There's no settings like this specifcially for downloading information, but you can enable Surge Protection to stop it from completly killing the capacity. 

Surge protection - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn

I've heard rumors about surge protection on a per workspace basis being planned (specifically in a keynote by Epic systems at their annual conference, I think they leaked secret info 😛 ) but nothing official from the Microsoft side yet. 

If you found this helpful, consider giving some Kudos. If I answered your question or solved your problem, mark this post as the solution.

[lbendlin]

Surge Protection limits background activities.  These user initiated downloads are more likely Interactive operations.

[tayloramy]

Thanks for that correction @lbendlin!