Forum Discussion
Disaster Recovery considerations for Power BI Embedded Capacity
Hi Shagil_I -Unfortunately, Power BI does not natively support automatic region-level replication of items (like models, query cache, R images) in Embedded capacities. Power BI Embedded is tied to the region where the capacity is created, and as such, the items stored in a workspace associated with a specific capacity are typically located in the same Azure region.
These are stored in the region tied to the capacity and are not automatically replicated to another region for read access in case of an outage.
If a region goes down, manual intervention is required to move the workspace to another capacity in a different region. This process would involve reassigning workspaces to the failover region’s capacity. For semantic models, especially large ones, this can be complex since they would not automatically move and might require redeployment.
To ensure continuity during an outage, you may need to set up backup/replication strategies for datasets and models manually and have a failover plan that includes reassigning workspaces or redeploying large models in another region.
Ref links:
Multi-Geo support for Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Power BI high availability, failover, and disaster recovery FAQ - Power BI | Microsoft Learn
Hi rajendraongole1,
Thanks for your response.
Our use case is to ensure data refresh and report accessibility when the region of Capacity is in outage, assuming all Azure services in this region are down; but services in Power BI home region remain available.
When you're using Multi-Geo, the following items are stored in the region that isn't your home region:
- Models (.ABF files) for import and DirectQuery semantic models
- Query cache
- R imagesFrom this, i understand that in our use case, as rest of the items are in home region, we only need to consider how to bring these items in the region of the target capacity (in same geographic area).
From the same page, it also appears to say that when a capacity is changed to one in a new region, the items are copied to new region.
When moving data from one region to another, the source data might remain in the region from which the data was moved for up to 30 days. During that time end users don't have access to it. The data is removed from this region and destroyed during the 30-day period.Also, here it says that large semantic models cannot be moved to new regions, so, i assume that small semantic models can be moved to other regions.
It's possible to create and maintain large-storage format semantic models in remote regions to meet data residency requirements. However, you can't move storage format semantic models to another region. Moving large-storage format semantic models from the region where they were created results in reports failing to load the semantic model. Move the large-storage semantic model back to its original region to make it available. If you must move such a model, deploy it as if it was a new model, and then delete the old model from the undesired region.
So, the questions is mainly to know whether there is a region level replication of the items (Models, Query cache, R images, as mentioned above) for Power BI Embedded ensuring, at least, read access (to allow copy) of these items to another region in case of a disaster.
What we are looking for is similar to as described here for Power BI items: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/fabric/security/experience-specific-guidance#sample-scenario. This page is for specific Fabric items. Does this also apply to Power BI Semantic Models, and other items in a Power BI Workspace associated with Embedded Capacity?
Hi Shagil_I -Unfortunately, Power BI does not natively support automatic region-level replication of items (like models, query cache, R images) in Embedded capacities. Power BI Embedded is tied to the region where the capacity is created, and as such, the items stored in a workspace associated with a specific capacity are typically located in the same Azure region.
These are stored in the region tied to the capacity and are not automatically replicated to another region for read access in case of an outage.
If a region goes down, manual intervention is required to move the workspace to another capacity in a different region. This process would involve reassigning workspaces to the failover region’s capacity. For semantic models, especially large ones, this can be complex since they would not automatically move and might require redeployment.
To ensure continuity during an outage, you may need to set up backup/replication strategies for datasets and models manually and have a failover plan that includes reassigning workspaces or redeploying large models in another region.
Ref links:
Multi-Geo support for Fabric - Microsoft Fabric | Microsoft Learn
Power BI high availability, failover, and disaster recovery FAQ - Power BI | Microsoft Learn