Forum Discussion
Memorable MemberIs the capacity metrics app supported? How?
Thanks again for the pointers
I spoke with an engineering manager today after my two-month outage.He wanted to share that in Q1 Microsoft will be deploying the capacity app as part of the core product,
This will be a very welcome change! Sometimes customers feel like we ourselves are responsible for the software’s reliability, since we had “installed it”. In reality we have little control over the behavior of the app.
Another interesting change that is coming is an event hub (kafka?) source that would allow customers to consume our own CU events in a near-realtime way:
Once these two items are delivered, customers should spend a lot less time with the ongoing maintenance of the capacity metrics app. The EM said we may be able to create our own alerting, or even automate the up-scaling and down-scaling of our Fabric capacity, based on capacity usage. This will probably cost a lot less, and give more flexibility than the current implementation of "autoscale" in premium capacities.
As far as the two-month outage is concerned, it seems to be triggered by overages. Also it seems to be region-specific. (it affects North Central US but not East US). Reinstalling the application is NOT a reliable solution - while there is a small chance it may work, the app will stop working again after the next overage.
Super UserHi dbeavon3
What I have done for enterprise customers, or customers running premium or fabric capacities, is I have a custom solution which extracts all the data from the metrics app into a different location so that it is not only easier to report on, but also it keeps all the history. That is something I would suggest looking into.
Memorable MemberHi GilbertQ ,
Thanks for the post.
I once saw a blog about this as well. I think it relies on the semantic model in that workspace.
However, I'm guessing that my immediate problem is a lot deeper than that. I have a two-month-long outage at the moment. (north central US). The "timepoint" data is simply not there.
... bugs are not the problem, per se. Bugs will always arise, in any software. I'm more interested to learn about the supportability of this app. It is critical to our operations, and the fact that we are experiencing an extensive outage without support is very concerning. Have you ever had the need to get in touch with Mindtree to get support for this app? How did it go? Did you ever get to talk to the PG at Microsoft?
After a two month outage, I'm under the impression that the app is not well supported. I don't think it is the fault of Mindtree either. There is no engagement whatsoever from the back-end PG (at Microsoft). It feels they might live on a distant planet. The time that it takes to get communication back and forth is at least two months. I really wish I understood how things came to be this way.
As a sidebar, I tried another version of the app today (1.5.1 rather than 1.2.1). It isn't working either.
- lbendlin
GilbertQ I think exporting the data from the Kusto database is counterproductive. The data needs to be actioned on in real time ( plus the very aggravating 8 minute delay). Looking at data of a capacity crash two days ago is not really useful.
What irks me most is the half-bakedness. The semantic model is really bad mess of two different data models mashed together, the data between them is inconsistent, and KQL queries are very very slow. We have a ticket open since March 2024 to get rid of the "Power BI Service" user CUs. Agree with dbeavon3 that this app is seriously under supported which makes Power BI and Fabric governance unnecessary hard.
- GilbertQ
Hi lbendlin
I totally agree with you. And it is currently not great that is why building a custom solution makes it easier to manage.
- dbeavon3
Thanks again for the pointers
I spoke with an engineering manager today after my two-month outage.He wanted to share that in Q1 Microsoft will be deploying the capacity app as part of the core product,
This will be a very welcome change! Sometimes customers feel like we ourselves are responsible for the software’s reliability, since we had “installed it”. In reality we have little control over the behavior of the app.
Another interesting change that is coming is an event hub (kafka?) source that would allow customers to consume our own CU events in a near-realtime way:
Once these two items are delivered, customers should spend a lot less time with the ongoing maintenance of the capacity metrics app. The EM said we may be able to create our own alerting, or even automate the up-scaling and down-scaling of our Fabric capacity, based on capacity usage. This will probably cost a lot less, and give more flexibility than the current implementation of "autoscale" in premium capacities.
As far as the two-month outage is concerned, it seems to be triggered by overages. Also it seems to be region-specific. (it affects North Central US but not East US). Reinstalling the application is NOT a reliable solution - while there is a small chance it may work, the app will stop working again after the next overage.
- GilbertQ
Hi dbeavon3
What happens if you had to create a new app and start using that? You could potentially then start seeing the data.
- dbeavon3
Hi GilbertQ
... I tried another version of the app today (1.5.1 rather than 1.2.1). See my last post where I mentioned that.
At first it didn't seem to be picking up the timepoint details. But I checked again this evening, and the timepoint details are in there now!
Thanks for the tip. Can I ask how you came to know about this?
I wish the Mindtree folks would have walked me thru the steps two months ago. Is it possible that they don't know about the trick of creating a new app?
None of this actually answers my questions about the supportability of this metrics app. Who was supposed to help me with this? It is not ideal if customers must spend two months on tickets with Mindtree and it takes them nowhere. I'm glad I'm back up and running again.... but the only lesson I learned out of this is to avoid wasting time with the Mindtree support channels. (I'm not sure that was the right take-away....)
