Concurrent Dataflow limits. Premium vs Pro

[BertieGG]

Hi All,

We are setting up a reporting platform utilizing the PowerBI service to ingest our data from our Dynamics Datalake utilizing the PowerBI Dataflows.  

Note: our dataflows are just ingesting data via Synapse from the datalake, and therefore are very basic, and are not creating any dependancies on other entities.

Currently we are on a Pro licence, and are starting to hit "concurrent Evaluations" limits, but we are unable to reconcile our experience back to the MS documentation.
Power BI Premium Gen2 capacity load, overload, and autoscale - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

This has all been working fine with 4 developers, but came to a head when we switched all of our dataflows to "Service Accounts", but even then we are seeing inconsistant results. (Different number of failures per day - even though everything is on a Daily refresh schedule)

The critical bits we are wanting to understand are:

• What is the definition of an ‘evaluation’ per the MS documentation?
• How does this relate to the refresh of a dataflow? i.e. one dataflow = 1 evaluation, or one entity (in a dataflow) = one evaluation
• If the concurrent limits are at tenant level, and there are only two refresh slots per hour (00 and 30 past the hour), how do we utilise the 1000 hourly evaluation limit?
• If we switch to Power BI Premium Per User – will this resolve the dataflow refresh limitation issues? 
  (this link does not appear to supply any clarity Dataflows Limitations, restrictions and supported connectors and features - Power BI | Microsoft Lea...)
• Are there refresh limits still with Power BI Premium Per User, and if so what are they?

Any guidance on the above would be much appreciated

[v-yueyunzh-msft · Accepted solution]

Hi, @BertieGG 

Regarding some of the questions you would like to know, here are some of my answers based on my understanding:

(1)What is the definition of an ‘evaluation’ per the MS documentation?

As far as I know, the definition of this evaluation is actually the same as the evaluation of "Data load" in the desktop settings, and an evaluation refers to a performance metric for Power Query to send queries to the data source.

For more infomation, you can refer to this document:

Evaluation configuration settings for Desktop - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

(2)How does this relate to the refresh of a dataflow? i.e. one dataflow = 1 evaluation, or one entity (in a dataflow) = one evaluation?

I think it's the same as you said the second option: one entity (in a dataflow) = one evaluation.We can think of an entity as a table, and when it needs to be updated, it sends a query to a data source.

(3)If the concurrent limits are at tenant level, and there are only two refresh slots per hour (00 and 30 past the hour), how do we utilise the 1000 hourly evaluation limit?

The restrictions in your screenshots are for PowerQuery Online, not for tenants.

For more information,you can refer to this documrnt:

Power Query Online Usage Limits - Power Query | Microsoft Learn

(4)If we switch to Power BI Premium Per User – will this resolve the dataflow refresh limitation issues?

According to my research in the official documentation, it only serves as a reference in the document to give the definition of the maximum limit, and does not divide according to your license or capacity, which means that the capacity you upgrade to the PPU can not do the dataflow refresh limit to improve or expand, and there is no evaluation limit for the difference in resources between different SKUs of dedicated capacity.

For more information, you can refer to this document:

What is Microsoft Power BI Premium? - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

(5)Are there refresh limits still with Power BI Premium Per User, and if so what are they?

As I mentioned above, there is no division according to your license or capacity, I also studied the relevant official documents, dedicated capacity is only the timeout time and incremental refresh and other features have been optimized and enhanced, you can refer to this document.

For more information,you can refer to this documrnt:

Dataflows Limitations, restrictions and supported connectors and features - Power BI | Microsoft Lea...

Configure Power BI Premium dataflow workloads - Power BI | Microsoft Learn

Best Regards,

Aniya Zhang

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